batch one: the folks i went to the gallery with, from left to right: ruriko, yuna, and mako, and a few shots from the gorgeSunday, November 11, 2007
Shashinjutsu 12 or something
batch one: the folks i went to the gallery with, from left to right: ruriko, yuna, and mako, and a few shots from the gorge
Ni Ji Kara Jugyo ga Arimasu
yeh. still here, in japan, doin' stuff n' things. i'll have to recount bunches of stuff as best i can and slap on some pictures afterward. so... what have i been doing? last weekend (two weekends ago, now, i suppose) i went out on the town with some folks to check out some galleries in akita city. one of the people i went with, yuna, was an intern for a while at a gallery we visited called the cocoa laboratory, or "kokorabu" in katakana characters. the cocoa lab was having a bazaar type thing, selling art and baubles and such, and it was in the first floor of an old 4 or 5 storey building that also housed a tiny cafe, a bookstore, and a fabric shop. there was a woman in the cocoa lab making some of her paper mosaic art, pasting little strips of paper onto a canvas with tweezers and glue. it has some specific name in japanese, but i can't remember what. yuna led us to another gallery in a hotel lobby that was showcasing a type of art called "ranga" maybe? or maybe that was just the name of the show... anywho there were mostly some scroll paintings by an american artist using a lot of japanese symbolism like peaches and cranes, kind of an exaggerated cartoonish representation of traditional japanese art. after just those two galleries, we had to get back to the station, so we wandered back and stopped in for a minute at another fabric shop, gallery, book/clothing store where everyone seemed to know yuna, and then ran for the train back to wada station where the bus took us to school.
sunday of that week, there was a school field trip to a gorge/valley and an amusement park type place. the gorge was 60 meters deep, i think they said, and toward the bottom, sulphur smelling jets of steam were shooting out across the river that cut out the gorge. there were a bunch of lots of stairs heading down to the river and a trail leading along the bottom of the gorge for a quarter mile or so. the leaves along the river and on top of the gorge were at their autumn peak. we walked along the trail, through a jet of stinky steam, and had to turn around and come back because of some construction or what have you. came back up, went to a bridge overlooking the gorge, bought some wasabi peas in a souvenir shop nearby, and got on the bus for the amusement park place. the park was a really odd combination of a childrens "wonder castle", a planetarium, a museum and a botanical garden, all connected by an electric choo-choo train on a track. we wandered around looking at flowers, eating stuff on a stick, and winding through the wonder castle's optical illusion maze, and then watched a show in the planetarium. hopped back on the bus and were deposited at the dorm for sundry whatnot.
ok. this is the second time i'm doing this part on account a cause the computer crapped out before i headed off to my tohoku culture class, so i'll shoot for a halfway decent rewrite here, if i can remember it all correctly...so. this weekend. saturday was the aiu sports festival, really just a bunch of goofball games that required minimal athletic ability, which i sure as hell qualify for. there were 5 teams of about 20-25 people each competing for free ice cream, i think it was, in games like the one where we tried to break balloons tied to the other teams ankles, a game where our team tried to toss balls into a box hanging off of someone's back while they ran around in circles, an obstacle course designed to make people throw up, with spinning and cola drinking being combined, a tug of war for which i was the anchor on the losing team, getting dragged down the track by the gut, an all team jump rope competition (25 of us trying to simultaneously jump under one giant rope), and a relay race. our team came in 4th out of five, i think. the sports fest lasted all dang day, and my old ass muscles hurt, so i'm pretty sure i wandered around for a while and then went to bed.
sunday was an all day field trip with my japanese society class to a temple, a shrine/museum, a sake museum, the sea of japan, and a river, all in the next prefecture to the south, 2 and a half hours away. the first temple was the same one we went to on the school field trip in september, but this time there was a whole bunch more historical context thrown in about the poet basho visiting the place and writing a haiku about it, and that it used to be on the ocean until a volcano erupted and filled in the bay, and now it's in the middle of farm land. the shrine/museum housed two mummified buddhist monks belonging to a sect that practiced a 5-10 year process of self mummification by severe diet and excercise regimentation including drinking laquer and arsenic. we also went to a spot on the sea of japan where there are 16 buddhas carved into the rocks along the coast, and clibed around for a while before heading off to the sake museum where we sampled 10 or so types of sake and got a little gift of a sake glass. we jumped in the bus, sang loudly for some reason, and made an impromptu stop at a wide section of a river where migrating ducks stop to rest, eat, rumble, and make little baby ducks, then settled in for the 2 and a half hour trip back to school, after which i ate me some balls of meat and passed out until morning.
there. two weekends of stuffs recounted twice. now what? laundry, dinner, homework, sleep, dunno. been slammed around a lot by various crap and i'm really not feeling myself lately. feel like i'm kind of just drifting and bumping into people and events, whereas a few weeks ago i was feeling good and grounded for once. yeh. i'll try to be more on top of this thing than i've been so far this month.
sunday of that week, there was a school field trip to a gorge/valley and an amusement park type place. the gorge was 60 meters deep, i think they said, and toward the bottom, sulphur smelling jets of steam were shooting out across the river that cut out the gorge. there were a bunch of lots of stairs heading down to the river and a trail leading along the bottom of the gorge for a quarter mile or so. the leaves along the river and on top of the gorge were at their autumn peak. we walked along the trail, through a jet of stinky steam, and had to turn around and come back because of some construction or what have you. came back up, went to a bridge overlooking the gorge, bought some wasabi peas in a souvenir shop nearby, and got on the bus for the amusement park place. the park was a really odd combination of a childrens "wonder castle", a planetarium, a museum and a botanical garden, all connected by an electric choo-choo train on a track. we wandered around looking at flowers, eating stuff on a stick, and winding through the wonder castle's optical illusion maze, and then watched a show in the planetarium. hopped back on the bus and were deposited at the dorm for sundry whatnot.
ok. this is the second time i'm doing this part on account a cause the computer crapped out before i headed off to my tohoku culture class, so i'll shoot for a halfway decent rewrite here, if i can remember it all correctly...so. this weekend. saturday was the aiu sports festival, really just a bunch of goofball games that required minimal athletic ability, which i sure as hell qualify for. there were 5 teams of about 20-25 people each competing for free ice cream, i think it was, in games like the one where we tried to break balloons tied to the other teams ankles, a game where our team tried to toss balls into a box hanging off of someone's back while they ran around in circles, an obstacle course designed to make people throw up, with spinning and cola drinking being combined, a tug of war for which i was the anchor on the losing team, getting dragged down the track by the gut, an all team jump rope competition (25 of us trying to simultaneously jump under one giant rope), and a relay race. our team came in 4th out of five, i think. the sports fest lasted all dang day, and my old ass muscles hurt, so i'm pretty sure i wandered around for a while and then went to bed.
sunday was an all day field trip with my japanese society class to a temple, a shrine/museum, a sake museum, the sea of japan, and a river, all in the next prefecture to the south, 2 and a half hours away. the first temple was the same one we went to on the school field trip in september, but this time there was a whole bunch more historical context thrown in about the poet basho visiting the place and writing a haiku about it, and that it used to be on the ocean until a volcano erupted and filled in the bay, and now it's in the middle of farm land. the shrine/museum housed two mummified buddhist monks belonging to a sect that practiced a 5-10 year process of self mummification by severe diet and excercise regimentation including drinking laquer and arsenic. we also went to a spot on the sea of japan where there are 16 buddhas carved into the rocks along the coast, and clibed around for a while before heading off to the sake museum where we sampled 10 or so types of sake and got a little gift of a sake glass. we jumped in the bus, sang loudly for some reason, and made an impromptu stop at a wide section of a river where migrating ducks stop to rest, eat, rumble, and make little baby ducks, then settled in for the 2 and a half hour trip back to school, after which i ate me some balls of meat and passed out until morning.
there. two weekends of stuffs recounted twice. now what? laundry, dinner, homework, sleep, dunno. been slammed around a lot by various crap and i'm really not feeling myself lately. feel like i'm kind of just drifting and bumping into people and events, whereas a few weeks ago i was feeling good and grounded for once. yeh. i'll try to be more on top of this thing than i've been so far this month.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Shashinjutsu 10
a few more shots from friday: some rocking out, the trophy as presented by the enigmatically pulchritudinous yoshimi, the champion sharing his take, and the best shot i could find of some of m'ladies from friday night - from left - nyonyo, lisa, and serena.Shumatsu Wa Nani O Shimashita Ka?
hullo. i'm avoiding work, and i thought a good way to do so would be to put a little thing up here about the fine goings on of last friday night. so. yes. friday night, the first annual aiu air guitar competition was held in a small hot room crammed with about 15 contestants and spectators. the lights were turned off and the people holding the competition used some little clip lamp for atmosphere while they videotaped the happenings and hosted it like one of the crazy japanese karaoke shows that always seem to be on. the competitors were introduced and then waited for the song to be queued up on somebody's laptop, posing and strapping on the nonexistant guitar and checking monitor levels and such, and then some japanese metal shitstorm would come out of the speakers and they would flail around for a while until the music was cut off, and then they would introduce the next person. the winner got a giant chocolate chip cookie with frosting on it that said aiu air guitar champion 2007, which he shared with everyone and then did an encore. it might have been the sunglasses that did it for him, or maybe because he did the most drastic back bends. anyway, it was spectacular.
after the air guitar, i went to a birthday party for a taiwanese fella. of course all m'ladies were there, and just about every other taiwanese and chinese student in the school, along with a smattering of white folks. i had some melon soda, some sweet taiwanese jerky stuff, played wii tennis, and got my ass handed to me in some cut throat taiwanese rules uno. a fine night to clear the head like a snort of vick's vapo rub, just what i needed.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Shashinjutsu what, 8,9? no, 8
so, aiu fest round one: taro-kun rocking the karaoke competition, the minnesota booth, the mummiez, and some wacky whatnot happening on stage. now round two...Ashita Tabun Ame ga Furimasen
hey, dudes. a post is long overdue. i have not been in a decent 'blogging mood' of late, but i'm not gonna let this thing go stale. so: aiu festival, then... the first day was a rainy bastard. what the blazes did i do? wandered up and down the row of student run food booths eating everything in sight. "minnesota" soup made by some japanese students who spent a year at st. cloud state, gyoza from m'ladies, taco salad, some japanese crunchy sandwich type thing called takose, a s'more, and a pita sandwich from hina's friends. derrrr... went up in the school to see some friends in their room, which they called the "art pu cafe", i guess they just liked the sound of the word "pu" and didn't know it meant a steaming dumpski. turns out i did'nt make it past mr. aiu round one to the part where i would have anything to actually participate in. not mr. aiu material, i guess. helped sell some frankfurters for a while, and when i was doing that, a big gust of wind knocked over part of the stage and all the outdoor stuff had to be cancelled for the first day. stinky.
second day, woke up early to catch some rescheduled bands in the auditorium, namely taro's band the mummiez. taro's pretty damn amazing, if somewhat lacking in polish, which is better anyway. crazy bastard. watched the first year students perform in their homeroom type groups. there was a competition for best performance, one group did some kind of super mario sketch, another did the thriller dance and dressed like zombies, suchlike. hmm... played some john fucking denver with the guitar club, sold some more frankfurtersssss... no one really bought any, we still had 100 left over afterward. the closing ceremony was really long, but pretty great. the japanese love their ceremonies. there were more performers, dances mostly, some acrobatic stuff with human pyramids, fireworks, and some student videos. pretty damn fine. it rained all weekend, so the field out front turned into a mud pit, and there were clumps of the stuff all over the school all week long. i think some students must have stayed up for the entire thing, and they were up all night after the closing ceremony tearing things down and cleaning. they were wearing the same clothes and staggering around the next morning. so that was the fest. i'll post some pics and then maybe do another post about last night's goings on, which were pretty coo.
second day, woke up early to catch some rescheduled bands in the auditorium, namely taro's band the mummiez. taro's pretty damn amazing, if somewhat lacking in polish, which is better anyway. crazy bastard. watched the first year students perform in their homeroom type groups. there was a competition for best performance, one group did some kind of super mario sketch, another did the thriller dance and dressed like zombies, suchlike. hmm... played some john fucking denver with the guitar club, sold some more frankfurtersssss... no one really bought any, we still had 100 left over afterward. the closing ceremony was really long, but pretty great. the japanese love their ceremonies. there were more performers, dances mostly, some acrobatic stuff with human pyramids, fireworks, and some student videos. pretty damn fine. it rained all weekend, so the field out front turned into a mud pit, and there were clumps of the stuff all over the school all week long. i think some students must have stayed up for the entire thing, and they were up all night after the closing ceremony tearing things down and cleaning. they were wearing the same clothes and staggering around the next morning. so that was the fest. i'll post some pics and then maybe do another post about last night's goings on, which were pretty coo.
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