Thursday, August 14, 2008

Uchi no Fushigi na Sekai

i'm in america, and everything is weird. people talk faster, louder and more often, food bubbles in my stomach for hours, i keep impulsively speaking japanese to people that have no idea what the hell i'm talking about, and even money looks and feels strange. i can read every menu. nobody says "irashaimase" when i walk into a store... most of the time i want to go back so i can take a walk in the woods or ride the train into the city a few more times before i really have to accept re-adjusting, and the rest of the time i'm excited and nervous about whatever the next few years of my life will turn out like.

being here in portland for a few days is a perfect little buffer between the last year of my life and whatever happens next. i get to be around some of the hugely motivated, brilliant, constantly creative and positive people that have always helped me appreciate my life and keep trying, and it's a chance to relax and have zero obligations while i slowly (very slowly) re-acclimate to the way americans live. so, while i'm here, i'll be walking all over, poking my head in all of portland's warm shops and galleries, and trying to get comfortable.

during my last few days in japan, i had plenty of last dinners and parties, went to the kanto festival, and spent a couple days in tokyo with one of my closest friends from the last 4 months. kanto was pretty amazing. we went out to the city on a really cold and rainy night, and stood out on akita city's main street with the rest of the prefecture while about 50 or 60 teams of taiko players and kanto pole lifters paraded out and got into position. then there was a starting announcement, and all the teams started whacking on the drums, chanting, clapping and hoisting the giant poles in the air. the strong winds and rain sent all the lifters staggering around trying to keep the poles up, and most of the time they were crashing over into the crowds or getting tangled up with eachother. the night ended early, because everyone was getting drenched and freezing, and the poles were impossible to keep up. some of us went out afterward for our last nomihoudai and midnight wander through akita city's night life district, the details of which are a little spotty. an okinawan themed bar, and everybody's favorite rockabilly joint were visited.

in tokyo, i stayed in a little flophouse a long walk out from the heart of shinjuku. i only had two days, enough time to wander around shinjuku and find a pretty good record store filled with tons of bands and albums i could only ever read about before, several of which there was no way to be restrained from buying. we also walked through shibuya's massive crowds, went to harajuku to squeeze down its main shopping street past kids in maid costumes and boots with six inch thick soles to the design festa gallery for another gawk, and went out to ueno koen on the hottest goddamn day in the friggin universe to meet another friend from school, walk through some temples, and eat icecream.

leaving was really fucked up and difficult and hurt a lot. it feels too abnormal to become a part of someone's life and then be forced out of the ability to remain an immediate part of it. in japan, despite massive social problems that can leave people feeling irrevocably shut out, or following along with something they're not comfortable with in order to avoid that total isolation, there is that connection with time and the earth and whatever intangible thing i'm trying to define here that was always calming and reassuring, and it's something i've never felt in america outside of my circle of friends. i am excited about the future, though, and it's worth all the confusion just to see what might happen next.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Chikubi ga Tatteiru






the lavender field; arriving, exhausted, at tokyo station; looking down the bastard mountain at the endless trail; sunrise from about halfway up; and this last picture is the design festa gallery, the place in harajuku i have wanted to see for years and spent half a day looking for last winter. finally found the thing at the end of a cramped little lane called "cat street", but didn't have so much time to poke around in there.

Kodomo no Toki, Ryoshin wa Yasai wo Tabesaseraremashita

yes, well... it has been a ridiculous month, and now it gets even more ridiculous with every day being the last time i will see someone i've seen every day for the past year, some of whom have really helped save a few of those days from being unbearable. so what the hell have i been doing this month...

waaaay back at the beginning of july, i went out to a nearby town called omagari to see some oft lauded magical field of lavender flowers with friends from norway, singapore and japan. it's a local tourist attraction, but for some reason, the closest we could get was about an hour walk after taking a train and a bus to get to that point. we staggered most of the way there through some crazy heat, and eventually got a lift for the last few hundred meters. when we got there, it was basically like a big parking lot with a few purple plants in it. i had a fine time, sure, but jeebus, it sure didn't look like the poster. on the long walk back to a convenience store where we could call a cab to the station, we almost got attacked by a pissy little cow drooling in a dilapidated barn.

went back out to the zoo with some folks on another hot day and engaged in some deep commune with a chimpanzee, who was sad and angry just like all the other animals there. i would knock on the glass, and then he would knock on the glass, and we did that a few times until a tennis ball or lump of crap or something seemed more interesting to him.

not too long after that was the school tanabata party. "tanabata" means "seventh night", and it refers to an old japanese folk tale that has something to do with two lovers who were banished to either side of the milky way, and can only meet once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh month. if it is cloudy on that day, they can't cross the milky way and they have to wait until the next year. so on this night in japan, people wear yukata, or summer kimono type dresses, and have parties and whatnot. a few bands played, and there were a few games i think, and then a bunch of people left early to eat and drink outside.

oh, hey, yeah, and then i climbed the biggest damn mountain in the country for some stupid reason. sounded fantastic at the time, but it was a baaaastard. a group of seven or so of us took the night bus which travels all night long from akita station to tokyo station, and gets to tokyo around 7 am, and is absolutely impossible to get any sleep on. our bus was called "kila kila hotto dogu" which means sparkling hot dog. so we got to tokyo, completely exhausted, and sat around shinjuku park for a while wondering how to spend the time until we took another bus to the mountain. we all ended up going to an internet cafe in harajuku to sleep some, which was also not all that possible. we could at least take showers there and relax a little. so eventually got on the bus which we thought would take us to the mountain, but actually brought us to the train station closest to the mountain, which was still more than thirty kilometers away. the only option was to take a few taxis, waiting there at the station like a couple of starving vultures, and pay the 4000 yen apiece. we got to the mountain around 11pm, when most people start climbing because you can see the sunrise from the top, and hauled all the hiking stuff out of our bags: warm clothes, head lamps, water, suchlike, and started climbing. my rickety old ass got exhausted pretty quickly. there are endless trails heading at a steep incline over switchbacks during the first section of the climb, and i was moving slower and stopping more often than everyone else. i finally stopped and told them i was going back down to find a place to sleep after about an hour of steady trudging, so they kept going and i sat recovering for a while. i settled myself enough to decide to keep trying for a while, and came to the second section which is basically hands and feet crawling over rocks between frequently interspersed rest huts, which of course in japan, try to sell you souvenirs while your clibing up a damned mountain. i stopped after a few hours of that, and sat at one of the rest stations talking to a guy from england about teaching english here and some of the things that we've done while we've been here. he told me it was another 3 or so hours climb to the top, and that it was extremely cold and difficult to breathe, so i figured i had enough and started heading back down very slowly. one of the old fellers working at one of the huts saw me freezing my ass off and told me i could wait in a little toolshed with some kind of warm generator deal in it until the sun came up. so watched the sun come up from halfway up mt. fuji, and bounced back down to the bottom to wait for everyone else. for the rest of the time in tokyo, we all just tried to get some sleep back at the internet cafe in harajuku, and then stank our way back to akita on another night bus. most of the time on this trip was spent feeling pretty uncomfortable and exhausted, but it was worth it to be able to burn something like this into my memory.

but we're only halfway through the month here... the next weekend i became thirty goddamn one years old. my gut expanded and a few more hairs fell out just thinking about it. thirty effing one. i'm no longer 30, i am now "in my thirties", and that is lame as hell. i had a great night, though. first, went out to dinner with a few people, and then came back here and sat in a corner of the cafeteria with 20 or so folks drinking and eating and getting weird presents like an ear pick and towels shaped like monsters or some such. we lit some fireworks and then kind of drifted into another party out by the student apartments, which was a jolly time.

what else... a few karaoke sessions, one of which lasted all night, until the first train in the morning could take us back to the local station, and a farewell party thrown by the school a few nights ago, with huge plates of food, speeches, a few performances, and people scrambling everywhere trying to get to all the people they want to see as much as possible before they have to leave.

so, a very odd month for me. it seems so unnatural to be forced to pull away from people that have shaped my life for the last year. i don't know if i can explain it beyond that, just a dragging, confusing, lethargic kind of feeling. i know i can keep in touch with everyone, though, and now i have friends i can visit in about 6 or 7 countries. of course i am also really looking forward to seeing all the people i had to leave behind when i came way the hell out here, and also frankly, i'm looking forward to that first giant ass burrito after touching down in the imperialist schweinhund motherland.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Akiramerrrrrrro!






a shot of towadako, making some candles with the chillunz, more fireworks, a huge taiko at the tree planting ceremony, and the guy that works at aoi tori, back in the little kitchen area.

Me ga Mabushi Sugiru






the attendees at the little dinner out by the damn mall, the birthday girl mei-ping shooting off some fireworks, a couple of the creepy cracks and tunnels in the copper mine, and a feller painting the creek near aomori.

Ketsumakuen Yabe!

well, shoooo... many things have gone down and transpired and happened over the last few weeks. among the things that happened was a morning when the entire damn earth wobbled and rocked like jeebus hisself was dribbling the globe like a big ass basketball. i scrambled out of my bed and ran out into the lobby in my unnerwears, and everyone was just strolling to breakfast like that kind of thing happened every day, gawking at my disshevled arse until i woke up enough to realize i should probably go get some pants on. the earthquake wasn't so severe here in akita, but in the next prefecture to the east, there were some roads and bridges destroyed, and a few landslides. so that was my first earthquake...

other happenings...went to a friend's apartment out in a neighborhood not too far away from the damn mall, and she cooked a whole bunch of food for us three visitors. just sat out there jabbering, eating, playing her piano, talking to her mom on the phone, making cookies and lounging about for a few hours, a lovely time. this friend talks to me alot about how living out there away from the school feels really strange, and i think i end up talking alot about how being stuck in the school sometimes feels really odd, so we whipped up this little plan to hang out and make some food. delightful, no?

a few days later was the birthday party for a friend from singapore, a lovely affair with snackie-poos, drinklie-winkies, and a jaunt over to the park to shoot off some fireworks. well, not really 'shoot off', i guess, japanese fireworks basically fizzle for a while and then shrivel up and blow away, but they're still friggin fireworks, so i shant cry foul.

nearly burnt eachother to a crisp for a while out there at the park, then went to bed relatively early, because the next day, there was a school trip out to an old copper mine, lake towado (not to be confused with tazawako), and a long, rushing stream right on the border of the next prefecture to the north, aomori. we spent almost 3 hours getting up there, and first crawled off the bus into the copper mine, a dank labyrinth of tunnels and creepy lights running throught the center of a mountain. there was a small shrine in there, a stock of sake and wine, and some of the tunnels were lined with flashing christmas lights for some reason, like a cockamamie science fiction movie. crammed ourselves back on the bus for a few more hours and drove up to the stream, slowly passing by plenty of interesting spots with rushing rapids or quiet walking paths, and stopped at a relatively uneventful little shallow spot to walk around for about 20 minutes. saw a feller painting a big canvas, and trotted along smelling the mossy rocks for as long as i could before i had to turn around and get back on the bus so we could go to towado lake. the lake was cold and choppy when we got there, a few tour boats winding around out there on the waves. the lake is pretty big, much larger than tazawako. we were just on a little bay with big green bluffs holding it in. tottered around there for a while, and sauntered back to the bus again to come home.

the next day, i joined a volunteer thing in the wada neighborhood to make candles and play english games with a bunch of kids from the area, most of whom were reluctant to talk to me, because at the time i had a big red eyeball on account of the trees blooming and whatnot. at least i learned the japanese word for 'conjunctivitis'. we sang songs, melted some crayons and stirred 'em up for the candles, and one kid taught me some kanji for a while. i walked back to school with a few people, taking the long way through some rice paddies and a shrine, working up a beastly sweat. later that day, had a picnic out in a little patio area, and lit off some more fireworks. this time some of them whistled, spun, and bounced around.

the next event of note was a trip out to a tree planting ceremony somewhere out in the middle of the prefecture, a big deal whith the emperor attending and everything. we all had to wear our ridiculous official event baseball caps, badges, and prove to security guards that our cameras were not in actuality secret spy bomb devices. so sat there in the damned sun for several hours while people danced around or sang and whatnot, all of which i could not see behind the thousands of people wearing the ridiculous official hats. then the emperor came out for a while, and we all went bananas, waving around little paper japanese flags. after that, we were ushered over to the tree planting area to spread some dirt around, and filed back on the bus for home. when we got back to school, i had exactly 9 minutes to get ready and run back out to the bus bound for the station for some plans i made with 3 japanese ladies (yeah, thats right, me and three lovely japanese ladies, people). we went out to a really great little cafe/bar/restaurant place called "aoi tori", or "bluebird". it was a quiet old place with scuffed up wooden furniture, book cases and plants along the walls, and a strong smell of chocolate wafting out from the little kitchen area in the corner. we had a big, multi-course dinner of italian-ish stuff (pasta and pizza, but with japanese ingredients, like full wasabi leaves in the salad) and just relaxed and talked about general whatnot for a while - studying abroad, differences between japanese and american people, and my abiding little crush on the country as a whole, and most of its people individually.

some other stuff what happened was yet another birthday party for a taiwanese friend, a surprise deal with a treasure hunt and everything, followed by about ten plates of appetizers, strange card games, and some running around out in the dark playing some half assed tag. also, recently, because it's getting so damned hot here, i went off to the local river to wade around in the water for a little while, sliding around on the rocky riverbed, and finally getting a little use out of the snazzy swimming trunks i brought with me.

coming up soon, what the hell.... erm... party tonight for someone from fall semester who's here for a few days visiting, and also, there is a little clump of 'summer program' people who have dropped in for 6 weeks of japanese study, mostly from singapore, so maybe i'll get to talk to a few of them. kind of a wierd time for a new group to be coming in, right when most people are thinking about the end of the semester, which is coming way too fast.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Shabilly-shabi-shashin






these pictures: indoor picnic party in the cafeteria for one of my taiwainese friends, party in the little student lounge for a mongolian friend's birthday, the monkeys lounging about on monkey mountain (or "saruyama" in japanese), another party (one of maybe three or four) for the mongolian guy, and the middle school kids welcoming us.

Sugoku Taisetsu da kara Yoku Oboite

well, yes... it's time to try and figure out where i've been for the last few weeks. no big trips or special school events or anything, but they've been pretty dang decent, making little spur of the moment plans and hanging out in various rooms with various peoples.

took another short trip to a middle school in the area which had a total of around thirty students. played some english games and ate lunch with them. asked some of the simple questions i can manage about their families and the things that they like or have done recently. there was also a middle school that came here for a tour and some group english discussion. one of my groups was lagging a little, so i spiced it up by asking if they new any bad words in english, and about four 12 year olds excitedly yelled "fuck!", but i don't think anyone else heard.

a few days later, a japanese friend who is in the middle of her study abroad year in america came back for a visit during her summer break, so folks that know her here spent a few nights going out on the town or hanging out in dorm rooms drinking and talking 'till we couldn't manage to stay awake anymore.

there have also been a rash of birthday parties lately, so i've been out to an all you can eat itallian place, had an indoor picnic, and ingested more cake and plum sake than my bowels can contend with. for some reason, all you can eat places are called "viking" here. did vikings eat more than any group in the history of the world? really, though, like five or six birthdays in 3 weeks.

one of the study abroad students has gotten his hands on a car, so we can do things like decide we want to go get chocolate and donuts after dinner, and then just head off to the damn mall and stock up on junk, and last week, because of the depressing cafeteria food, a group went out to ichi no tori, the really great yakitori place in the cramped, cool area of akita city, for piles of the most wonderful damn chicken i've ever gnawed off the end of a stick, and a big, hot bowl of confoundingly satisfying nabe.

also went to the zoo for a little while somewhere in there. we got there pretty late, so we had to rush through a little bit, guided by scent to the monkey mountain section, where we watched the pissed off, bored chimps lay around and half heartedly groom eachother. we were also grunted at by a giant, frothing, horned thing from africa and stared at by some prarie dogs, turtles and lions. i likes me some aminils, but zoos can be pretty solemn places sometimes.

yup. so i guess that's where i've been... eating pasta and sitting crosslegged on people's floors. i'll scrape together some decent pictures from the last few weeks.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Bunpo wa Tadashi demo Yoku Tsukawanai

dutdutdutdutdut...the last couple weeks...golden week came and went pretty quickly. most people took off for travels, and a lot of the japanese students went home to work or be with families, so the population was a little sparse here for a while. took the bus trip to kakunodate and tazawako on a cold, windy, rainy day, were shepherded through some buildings with crafts and whatnot, took a tour of a samurai house which for some reason has displays of grammaphones, cameras, and medical textbook drawings in part of it, and then set off in different directions to wander around the town. i met the bad ass ojisan with the giant beard for the third time. this time around he was out in front of the udon shop he is always sitting in and he was selling big bins full of his detailed little paintings of kakunodate, organized by season. he seemed like he had a fever, hangover, empty stomach, and a broken heart all falling in on him, so i didn't talk to him much. took off for tazawako where it was too cold and rainy to stand around by the lake for too long, and trudged up a nearby hilllside to catch a little bit of a view through some trees. came back down, bought something hot to drink next to the little tourist complex of food stands and souvenir shops, got back on the bus, and headed back to school.

later that week, i walked to a local shrine with a first year student, and the next day or thereabouts, went into the city to show her and a friend of hers some of my favorite spots in akita city, wandering, eating and suchlike out over the river, through the crowded night life area and looping around back to the station. there was also a takoyaki party in there somewhere. a big group of the first year students got together in the kitchen with a few takoyaki grills, little square things with 20 or so half spheres for the batter, and proceded to cook maybe four or five hundred takoyaki balls over the course of a few hours. i ate maybe 498 of the 500, so my stomach was straight jacked for the rest of the evening, which of course didn't stop me from joining the nabe party, which began about an hour after the takoyaki party ended, and slurping up a few bowls of that.

the weekend after golden week, i went with a group to happocho for an overnight english teaching/ hiking trip. we stayed in a training facility with bedrooms and a gymnasium right on the coast of the sea of japan, got fed dinner and the next morning's breakfast, and then headed out pretty early to a tiny elementary school with only 38 students from 1st to 6th grade. played some english games, sang songs, practiced greetings, introduced our home towns, and they played a big marching band song for us on drums, accordians and recorders. they also made sketches of our faces and showed us a little practice run of their upcoming sports matsuri, running a relay race and dancing around with giant, bright flags. after the school, we drove up the side of a mountain to a trail head and were guided through the woods by a guy wearing full fatigues and a big, thick survival vest with about 12 pockets for knives an who knows what the hell else, and he told us about the things growing on the mountain, and how they're used by people and animals. i saw a big pile of salamander eggs sitting just under the surface of a little swamp and bear claw marks on half the trees, some of which are around 400 years old. came back from all that stuff, exhausted from the hike, and went up to the auditorium to watch another super rock fest blowout which lasted for four hours, left early to hang out in a norwegian's room, and then wandered through the lobby at around 4am talking to some pretty spectacularly drunk folks, which always warms the heart, does it not?

the next day, had a party in the tatami house across the street for the voleyball club. more beverages, blathering, popcorn throwing, and consoling of first year students who went a little too fast with the hooch.

and now it's now and i am without obligation for the time being, until this evening, when i have to sit around and work on a group presentation about the definition of happiness. i will throw chocolate at people during the presentation.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Cow Island






these are: the people at the welcome party, and several shots from the cherry blossom viewing in senshu koen.

The Queen of Good Smells and Hometowns

so many stuffs what i done these last dozen days or so... just got back from the park across the street where i played a few rounds of basketball with a norwegian, a singaporian and five kids from 6 to 10 yrs old. i can't ambulate and control my movements so well on account of my advanced age, so the kids whooped me up pretty good.

what the hell else, i can't keep things straight... the sakura have bloomed and blown away already. the school is surrounded by cherry trees, so everyone has been out to oggle and smell. i went on a little picnic in the park with the taiwanese and korean students, and last weekend, went with a group to senshu koen for their hana-mi matsuri. the park was jammed with people sitting on big blue tarps layed out with food and drinks brought from home, and plates of matsuri food from the stands lining every pathway in the park. we wound our way up the main path to the castle tower and back down, stopping for takoyaki and beer.

herrrmmmm... there was a little welcome party for the new first year students in the auditorium with performances and weird games. one of them involved the drawing of paper from a hat which had either a beverage or a food on it. people had to draw two pieces, combine the two things, and drink the combination. some people ended up with stuff like iced coffe and tofu, or curry and cola.

there have been a few birthday parties with new and old students, eating of cake, and some traditional mongolian dish comprised of beef dumplings boiled in milk tea. that night, we also made some fluffy pan-a-cakes with frosting and whipped cream and then ate it all gone.

i'm using my pictures to try to keep track of the chronology and happenings, but there have been a few things i didn't get on there...spent an evening with a couple third year students who i don't get to see too often and have been trying to make plans with for a while now, just sat around talking in one of their rooms, a big spacious place in the apartments that look like cabins or motels or something, out on the edge of the little forest adjascent to the school, and was over there again a few nights ago for a guitar club welcoming party.

i also took part in an activity for the volunteer club last sunday, cleaning garbage from a local riverside. i can never seem to remember the name of the river, but i think it's one of the largest in the tohoku region. there were about 50 students and staff, and another 50 or so from the local community collecting trash, putting it in trucks, and bringing it up to a big clearing where most of the students were working on sorting all the junk and charting the info. we were sorting garbage for over 4 hours, i think, and i don't think we even made a dent on the massive ammount of detrius that gets picked up by the river when the water level rises. there was stuff stuck 10 feet up in the trees for miles along the banks. we found 15 tires, a mound of baseballs, tennis balls and soccer balls, a television, 170 something bags of styrofoam, and a grand total of something like 520 bags of garbage dragged up the riverbank. after collecting all that junk, we went for a short row down the river in a bunch of canoes, chugging along singing sailing songs and trying to control the damn canoe in the very fast current of the river.

what the hell else... it's golden week now, a string of national holidays, so there's no school for about 10 days. a lot of people have returned home or gone on little trips, and i've been in the lobby 'till 4 am the last few nights talking and whatnot with the ones who have stayed, which is pretty damn fantastic.

that's about the bulk of what i can recall from recnt happenings. tomorrow, there's a school trip to kakunodate and lake tazawako, supposedly to see cherry blossoms, but they're gone already, so it'll probably be a bunch of walking and eating. yerp. what say i put up some pictures?

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Doushio Ka Naaaa?

nothing particularly monumental going on of late, spring has swooped in this week, and some of the cherry trees are partially in bloom across the campus. still pretty brown here, though. meeting more people and staying up late talking and making little plans to get a little more exercise: playing basketball with one of the new japanese students, joining the volleyball club to slap a ball around and bruise up my forearms. also joined the volunteer club, which will be going out next sunday to pick up garbage from a local river and then taking a little canoe trip somewheres.

it feels very strange having most of the people i've gotten to know move out to separate buildings on the outside of the campus. they don't really come to the dorm anymore, so i've got to make special plans or chance across them studying in the library or running between classes. all of my established little social circles have to shift.

my classes this semester seem pretty decent so far. i'm taking japanese 204, the next language level with the same sensei i've had the whole time. learning a language is a pain in the arse, people. all sorts of words and whatnot. i've also got a class called "the samurai and the sacred" about samurais and religion and how they are connected. it's taught by a wingnut visiting professor from leeds university in england, a guy who jitters and bobbles around the room and waves his arms around and sometimes acts out the lectures in different voices. then there's japanese history, which is pretty straightforward bare bones college lecture, and a 4 1/2 our class called "religion and bioethics" taught by a former buddhist monk who flies in every week from the university of hiroshima.

had a birthday party last week at the tatami mat house down the road for one of the american guys. there were plates piled with food, a long table stacked with drinks, and some mildly salacious goings on after a few japanese drinking games.

my last semester here. only about 15 more weeks, and i'll have to return to the u.s., where i won't have to struggle to communicate, something i know i will actually miss. makes me feel a little frantic about getting around to everyone i want to spend time with and keeping in touch with people, but i'm also anxious to get on with things back home.

i'm going to run around outside now, before the clouds crowd out the sun again and akita is swallowed up by another 72 hour downpour.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Saikin ni Jikan ga Nai Yo

yoisho! i have a minute here before i wash some dirt offa me to mention a few happenings from the last few days whatnot. i'm tired and i have a little bit of a cold, though, so this might turn out a little weird. last week, mother dear showed up with a friend on an extremely windy day, and we wandered around to whatever sights came to mind getting battered around by the gales. went to a big city market with sea animals and plants for sale and consumption and i was able to talk with some of the obaasans working there, and even managed to translate a little bit. also went to a few museums and the kanto festival center where i attempted and failed horribly at hoisting a kanto pole meant for 9 year olds.

the next day, mother and the friend came out here to the school for a tour and also for the chance to embarrass me in front of all the people i've met since i got here. they happened to come on the day when all the new students move into the dorm, so things were ridiculous here with boxes being passed everywhere, nervous families running around, staff and student supporters handing out instructions and gesticulating and explaining, and i had to stop the little tour i was giving a few times to carry refrigerators up to the fourth floor and suchlike. walked around to all the buildings and went to our immense new library, with brand new , buffed hardwood floors, huge windows, wide open lounging areas, and a huge main room with exposed rafters fanning out in a big circle over the bookshelves. it actually makes me want to study there. so. yes. mother and her friend took off, and i think i carried a few more things and met some folks and who knows what else went down that day.

the new students tried to settle in, and were given little informal tours around the dorm by upperclassmen, and i had a chance to meet a few of them that first night. the day after move in, there was a greeting party in the cafeteria with tons of food set out on tables with a number and letter stuck to them. everyone who came in to the cafeteria drew a paper with a number and a letter on it from a bag and went to their assigned table. so everyone met and talked first at the number table for a while, then switched to their letter table to meet some new people. met a lot of people that night, exchanged some numbers, and made plans to go on a walk the following afternoon.

the next day (or thereabouts, maybe it was two days later, i can't remember at all. everything over the last week has been mushed up and mixed up and swirled around.) met in the lobby with all the people who wanted to go on the walk, which ended up totaling 14, 12 new japanese students, m'self, and a guy from england, and wandered off to the woods behind the sporting complex. we broke into the big track stadium for a little bit, and then ended up bumping into a long bridge over a gorge that none of us knew was there. followed the path over the bridge and around the base of a large hill, right behind the airport where we saw a few planes take off. when the path looked like it was never going to end, we decided to turn around and come back to the school, a three hour round trip.

also in there was a surprise invitation to the home of kitaichi-san, the really friendly old feller that works in the dorm office. a few students piled in his car and bought a whole mess of food at a market and then went back to his home to cook and eat together. kitaichi-san's home is friggin amazing. it's huge by japanese standards, all the rooms connected by modernized versions of japanese sliding doors, and a main room with a tall ceiling that can be viewed from the second floor. he and his wife have a huge, custom made table in the main room with a fire pit in the center for grilling. they heated up wood out in front of the house and brought it in by the bucket load, laid out metal grids, and started cooking all the beef, pork, fish, shrimp, oysters, and vegetables we bought at the market. kitaichi-san and his wife sang old old traditional japanese songs to each other across the table and looked at eachother like they just got married yesterday. it was so incredible to watch them interact. so i got to spend another evening in a japanese home with two people who seem like they've been totally in love for over 40 years. i had to almost block out thinking about how far beyond any of my expectations the whole night was, because i would have totally lost it, and crying and eating at the same time is nearly impossible and kind of gross.

other than that, i've been staying up late talking to new students, catching up with people that have been gone, and meeting people from australia, new zealand, hungary, norway, thailand, taiwan, korea, austria, denmark, and the u.s. sometime soon there will be more talking, more walking, a bike ride, and then classes start theday after tomorrow. i think i'm going to try cramming as many classes as possible into my schedule, and see how that goes...

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Shabishibinjubitsubu






the old sapporo brewery, part of the restaurant inside the brewery, kitaichi-san's sister and her husband, the bridge in aomori at night, and the remains of hirosaki-jo.

Shamalama Shashinjutsu






this batch: warehouses in the hakodate harbor, a hakodate street at night, waiting for a streetcar, a view of the fort from the tower, and some warehouses along a canal in an old area of sapporo

Yooooooosh!

just got back from a long, exhausting trip, walking all over sapporo and hakodate on the island of hokkaido, and aomori city on honshu with a couple students. our guide in sapporo was another student home for the spring break.

our first night was spent in hakodate, a port town on the southern edge of hokkaido. the harbor in hakodate is lined with old 19th century, western style warehouses and little canals leading up to the loading dock areas of all the buildings, which have been converted to shops and restaurants. we wandered around and ate at a ramen place, then headed up the side of a mountain out on the edge of the city by way of a ropeway gondola. up there, we had a misty view and a whole bunch of wind, so we rode the creepy, swaying gondola back down the mountainside and went to bed, stopping for some sushi on the way.

the next morning, we got up really early to eat at a few blocks of shops and a covered market area selling really fresh, really pungent seafood (the whole place smelled like a big wet fish), and then rode one of hakodate's streetcars out to the grounds of a 5-point star shaped former fortress from the mid 19th century, i think it was the site of the last standoff between meiji forces and the old shogunate. there's absolutely nothing left of any of the buildings, just the moat area and the space inside it, which is now a public park lined with cherry trees which haven't blossomed yet. there's a tower next to the park, so we rode the elevator up and got a good view of the city and the entire fortress area, then ate lunch at an extremely wierd restaurand which combined circus and 16th century european religious imagery, served burgers, and played '50's american music.

raced for the train, made it just in time, and rode all the way up to sapporo on the other side of the island. up there, we met naho, the student who lives up there, and went out to an old area just outside the city with a long street of old western style warehouses that sold food and produced glassware, jewelry, and music boxes. we had some oysters, giant kamaboko (fish cake) rolls, sushi, and ice cream, and wandered along another harbor area with old warehouses and canals.

that night was our first of two staying in the house of the sister of kitaichi-san, a really friendly, goofy old guy that works in the resident hall office. his sister lives in a suburb of sapporo with her husband and her brother. i was scared shitless i'd say or do something wrong or screw up the bath taking or breakfast customs, but they seemed to like me and kept giving us food and presents the whole time. the second night we were there, they took us out to dinner and fed us two gigantic plates of the best sashimi i've ever eaten, with lobster, shrimp, oysters, salmon, and two kinds of nabe, a japanese hot-pot. the husband told me to "be careful with my big body", and the wife and he refered to eachother as "mother" and "father". i don't really know how to describe something that fulfilling, something i wanted to have the chance to do for so long. they were so warm and enthusiastic the whole time, they made me feel as comfortable as i could possibly have felt.

on our second day in sapporo with naho, we walked all over the city checking out some of the old western style buildings that are still standing, an old kendo school with a clock tower, some kind of city hall building, a few buildings on the campus of hokkaido university, and an old sapporo beer brewery which now has some old restaurants in it. we ate at a mongolian barbecue, stuffing ourselves with little grilled chunks of meat and vegetables, walked through some more shops in the warehouse, then headed back to kitaichi-san's sister's house.

the next morning we got on a train for aomori, back on honshu. aomori's another harbor city with a huge, two-towered cable bridge and a whole bunch of famous apple orchards in the surrounding area. we went out to the site of aomori's main matsuri, somewhere in the woods, and walked around for a while next to a creek, then came back to the area around our hotel for some walking along the harbor and dinner. on day two in aomori, we went to the excavated site of a settlement from the jomon period, people that lived there 5,ooo years ago. there were some reconstructed huts, one of which was a huge hall where the whole community lived in the winter to keep warm, some burial mounds, and a pit where they threw animal bones and miscellaneous garbage. we also saw some of their tools, pottery and jewelry. alot of it was very similar to early native american homes, tools, and designs. it's amazing to me that people who lived thousands of miles away from eachother would arrive at such closely related concepts of design and useage at around the same point in time.

after the jomon huts, we went out to an area called hirosaki, filled with old shrines and temples. we walked along a road of nothing but shrine after shrine for a few miles until we came to an orchard with a playground area and visitor center. we talked to a woman working out in one of the fields, and she gave us apples and a big jar of pure apple cider. after the orchard, we went to the site of hirosaki castle, a big area of gardens, ponds, streams, bridges and the remains of the castle, a large tower on top of a hill overlooking the hirosaki area. we went to the downtown area of hirosaki for some dinner in some wierdly overpriced joint where the operators were also the house shamisen players, who played a song for us because we had to catch our train back to akita before their nightly show started. the shamisen has an amazing, kind of scary but beautiful drone and twang sound, and the song they played was pretty intense. they whacked the shamisens with huge picks, barked and shouted things and stared straight ahead, moving only their arms.

we got on our train, and rode for several hours back to akita, talking and eating one of the 6 or 7 bags of food kitaichi-san's sister and her husband gave us, got back to school, and then i sat around being groggy for a while, for some reason not wanting to go to bed. i felt like i was gone for a long, long time, and akita station really felt like home when we finally got there.

shwew! long post. now a lot of pictures.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Mo Shashin






the sea of japan, the tofu maker, the view of sendai from the site of sendai castle, cliss road in sendai, and one of the islands of matsushima

Shashin Totta






carls quinn in the cafe, hard hatted fellows waiting around in akita station, the view from senshu park, the tower of kubota castle, and the chilluns what i worked with last weekend.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Shorai ni, Ego no Sensei ni Naru Tsumori Desu

it has been another goodly ammount of time since i last posted, and several occurences have transpired in the meanwhile. CARLS QUINN(!!) visited me last week, and i did the best i could with this little backwater burg - we went to the coolest building in town, a 4 storey job with a gallery, fabric shop, book store and cafe stacked on top of eachother, and stared out from the cafe windows at the river that runs through akita city. we also went to kakunodate, the nearby town with a few old samurai houses, by shinkansen. took a tour of some of the places and met the fellow with the giant beard that i mentioned from my first trip out there. the town was still covered in snow, and the houses were protected by giant wooden pallet things, so we couldn't see much, but it was a damn fine day anyhow. i also introduced her to a few folks here who hadn't yet taken off for their spring break plans. cai-shuan, a Taiwanese friend, was pretty jazzed to meet carls, and cooked up a special meal with everything she had left in her room: a packet of Taiwanese instant noodles, a single potato, a few eggs and 2 or three pieces of bread, and we ate it together. tried to take a walk in the woods, but the snow was still two feet deep out there, so we kind of abandoned those plans quickly and just watched people playing video games in the lobby that night. also saw senshu park, site of the old kubota castle, of which only one guard tower remains, which was of course closed for the winter, and went to the two museums in the park, one with an enormous 40 or 50 foot wide by 10 foot tall panoramic painting of famous Akita sites and happenings. we went to the kanto museum, and i tried hoisting one of the giant kanto poles, which didn't work out so well (them things is heavy), and saw a couple other museums, one in an old mid Meiji era bank, and another in an edo period haberdashery. she left in a taxi for the station early in the mornig last wednesday, and now i miss carls quinn very much.

i really have no idea what inna hell i did for the rest of last week...maybe a trip to the mall to wander around and a trip into town to eat and drink many items, after which we met a guy on the train with a mohawk and a pink tie, who claimed his job was "hole digger" and then gave his tie to one of the girls i was with.

then on sunday i went to sendai with a few people and was guided around by a friend who was home in sendai for the spring break. we saw the former site of sendai castle, which has been converted into a litle park and lookout point, because nothing is left but the enormous foundation. we could see the whole city up there, sendai being the largest city in the tohoku region, and the river that snakes around along the border of the business district. the castle was built by a samurai, date masamune, who wore an eye patch because one of his eyes was poisoned somehow. we wandered through a mile long street of shops covered by a domed roof, a kind of tunnel called cliss road, and bought some breaded kamaboko (fish cakes) on a stick, a sendai specialty. the next day, we went out to the pacific ocean to tour around matsushima, an area of hundreds of tiny islands, each with a name, and most having some kind of legend or poem or history of some sort attached to them, and walked out on a long bridge to a larger island with a view of the bay. the boat was swarmed by seagulls for the entire tour, because people feed them shrimp flavored chips from the observation deck, and one of the birds took a big steaming crap on the arm of one of the people i was with.

after the tour, we ate lunch at a place that serves another sendai specialty, "gyutan", or cow tongue. it took the entirety of the trip to work up the gall to try it, but it wasn't all that bad, maybe just a little rubbery and in need of some horseraddish. we bumped into another student on her way home for the break, and checked out some temples at the top of a whole bunch of stairs, and then headed for the bus that took us back to akita city.

a fine few weeks it's been. next week i head to the island of hokkaido to toole around sapporo and a town called hakodate with a giant star shaped castle, and maybe we'll spend some time in aomori, the prefecture to the north with all the apples in it. mother also makes an appearance the week after that, so there will be more guiding and wandering tied to that event.

oh, hey, i forgot that i also spent a day last week teaching 5 year olds some english, singing songs, reading stories, and playing a fruit name game, after which we went to the house of a guy who makes tofu where everyone on the trip made and ate a little bowl full, and walked along a black volcanic ash beach on the sea of japan.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Metcha Yabai Yo Ne Kore?

feel a little lax in my reportings of late, i've got stuff from a couple weeks that i have yet to mention. the last few days have been another hectic weird semester ending jumble of people leaving, going crazy over finals, and because it's the end of the school year for the first year students, they all have to move out of the dorms and into the independent housing on either end of the campus. so they've been all over the place, charging down hallways pushing carts stacked with boxes and little personal refridgerators. i said goodbye to about seven people over the last two days, a bunch of us mopey mofos waving at the car or bus carrying away someone i felt like i was just getting to know. it's a hard way to have to meet people. yag. so this will be kind of a lonely break, with most people either returning to their country, or the japanese students either off to their hometowns or holed up in their new apartments.

what the hell else has been going on? two weekends ago, there was a school trip to the lake tazawako yuki matsuri, or snow festival, which was actually at a ski resort on a mountain a mile or two away from the lake. we showed up in the middle of some ridiculous cold and wind, a precursor to the blizzard that showed up later that night. the weather was so bad that the festival had to be cancelled. there were supposed to be fireworks and giant paper baloons being released, but there was only a short taiko performance and a little time to wander around eating festival food and looking at the enormous snow sculptures of japanese gods of luck (i think) and one of ultraman. we got back on the bus, and our consolation for the shortened trip was a few rounds of karaoke on the bus' built in system.

i also went out for another night at rakuichi, the nomihoudai place i really like because of the wide open set up allowing for a lot of chances to meet people at surrounding tables. four of us went, and we just had some beverages and talked and farted around for a while, then returned to school. nothing monumental, just a good night.

there was also the all school snowball fight the morning after i returned from the internet cafe. i had just enough time to get myself to temporarily stop stinking with a quick shower, then headed over to the big sporting complex parking lot where the yukigassen (snowball fight) courts were set up. there were about four barricades wedged into the snow on each teams side, all of them about 3 feet high and 3 feet wide. there were about 10 or 12 teams of 7 or 8 people each who had to put on colored vests signifying their team, and matching specialized yukigassen helmets with plastic protective visors over the eyes. it was set up like capture the flag, each team had to try to advance toward the other teams flag without being pelted by a snowball. our team played, i think we may have won, then we watched the other teams play and frigging froze solid. after the fights, some people talked to a local television crew, then we all headed to the dining hall of the sports complex for a huge hot lunch, about 100 students in all.

also went out for a pretty good night of karaoke with one of the higher level japanese language teachers and some of the language students, and invented a beverly hills cop two drinking game. drinks everytime that stupid song plays, once for every time eddy murphy laughs, and a big swig whenever anyone says "we gotta talk".

so that there's my convoluted, half asleep rendering of the last few weeks of my life. tomorrow, i go to akita station to pick up a little special someone called CARLS QUINN who will be here for 4 or 5 days, sleeping on a wafer thin futon in my dorm room. so much crap i want to show her, i caint goddamn wait! this means i have to vacuum the damned floor. yosh! my head don't work, i need to climb up to bed now...

Friday, February 29, 2008

Nuigurumi Bangumi

it`s 2am, and i`m at an internet cafe in akita city with three other students. we came into town tonight to see a rotating group of jazz musicians at a club called the catwalk. the last train left 4 hours ago, so we came here to screw around, read manga, and probably sleep a little bit. there are internet cafes all over japan. it`s usually a mix of drunk folks who missed the last train, people who cant sleep, manga `otaku` [people who have a fixation] and homeless people. there are overnight fares at internet cafes, so they are kind of set up as a temporary place to put yourself for the people who need it. so, yeh... i`m here, stinky, tired, with a little teacup filled with hot strawberry milk from the complimentary drink bar, pecking out drivel on a keyboard where all the symbols are switched around. at an internet cafe, everyone gets their own little booth, almost long enough to stretch out in, with a computer, menu, and phone to call the front desk, and out beyond the islands of booths are row upon row of manga.

the catwalk was a pretty interesting place. the whole club is underground. the only thing at street level is the door and the top of the tunnel that leads down into the club. behind the little wooden stage is a wall filled with all the signatures of well known jazz musicians who have played there since the place opened in 1982. we had some drinks and a pizza, and various folks kept hopping on or off the stage between songs. a trombonist, two saxaphone players, two guitarists, two drummers, an upright bass player, two pianists and three vocalists.

had a damn fine time tonight, walking across the city and back, talking with people at the club...it`s late. i`m startingto lose functionality up around my brains, so i will have one or two more cups of hot fruity milk and then maybe fall asleep for a while. we should get back to school just in tim for the all school snowball fight later this morning. here`s an e-mail i got from kaina today, the half-japanese boy i taught in preschool and visited here in tokyo:

my dad likes guitars. kaina likes ultraman.

kaina

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Shashinjutsu Bonus Cuts






octo-pile, old snack shack, observation tower/light house, ryota blowing out his birthday candle, and the guy everyone calls ebi-kun (shrimp-boy) eating the disgusting american candy.