Landing in Tokyo

I am sitting here next to Rusty Taylor, who has just slept through his first "freezing ass night" in Japan that wasn't in a nice warm hotel. We just returned to my neck of the woods on the overnight bus from Tokyo, and we have been lounging and eating and Rusty has been complaining about the general coldness of all things Nakatsugawa. I just know he already misses the bright blinking lights and short skirts of Tokyo. The most exciting thing we have is McDonalds, and he already went there.

Tokyo was a whirlwind tour of beer, shiny things, and riding subways. Rusty described Tokyo as "one big showcase of the things Japan makes." There you have it folks. Actually, we had quite a great time in Japan's capital. I took the train out to meet Rusty at the airport, where we spent approxmiately 45 minutes trying to outsmart his bank account at the foreign ATM. Our hostel was a good find, and it was an outpost of warmness and English speakers in a sea of coldness and Japanese speakers. It was also very cheap.

I introduced the Boy to the bright lights of Tokyo, and we had fun for several days exploring the small restaurants of Tokyo and introducing him to Japanese food. We ate at Yoshinoya for breakfast both days, and the Boy even came to tolerate miso soup, part of the traditional Japanese breakfast. He describes it as "fish brine with seaweed." That sounds like a pretty glowing endorsement to me.

We also stumbled across one of the world's great untapped cheap beer resources, in the form of the Yebisu Beer Museum at the Sapporo beer headquarters. They have a small museum, which is completely in Japanese and really just an excuse to get to the tasting room at the end, where you can purchase $2 coupons for glasses of fresh beer! Despite the museum-ish feel of the bar, you couldn't beat the price and quality.

We explored all around the city for days, browsing in the insanely massive electronics district at Akihabara and the seizure-inducing lights and noise of Shibuya, as well as visiting a whole area whose stores only stock supplies for opening restaurants. We picked up some plastic food displays for gifts back home. I introduced the Boy to Mos Burger, which didn't impress him too much, even though it's my favorite burger joint around here. I think coming from the land of burgers, his standards were too high. He learned to take his shoes off at the door of the hostel (even though when he first saw that he would have to do this, he said, ever the diplomat, "I am not taking my f-ing shoes off." I even taught him some words of Japanese for ordering in restuarants. The boy's "Arigatos" are quite good, I must say.

On our last day there, we were to take the 11:30pm bus back to Nakatsugawa, but unfortunately Tokyo is shutting down for New Years. So we quite literally ran out of things to do by about 4pm. Our only solution was to head back to the hostel, which we had already checked out of, and purchase some beers at the local 7-11 and relax at the hostel for many hours until it was time to go. We spent many happy hours conversing with the other whities before I decided it was time to head to the station, just to be early.

Of course, by this point I had consumed about 4 biggish cans of beer, and so my normally awesome organization abilities were in a somewhat compromised state. As we rode the subway, I took out the bus tickets to inspect them and show them to Rusty. This was the last time I ever saw them. We got to Shinjuku station with about 40 minutes to go, planning on grabbing some McD's before our ride. I stopped to check my things again, and everything was quite in order, except of course for there being no tickets. Concern, with remarkable haste, gave way to sheer mindless panic, and my tipsy mind started racing to horror scenarios of freezing to death on the streets of Tokyo or, worse, of having to pay money for another hotel. I couldn't believe the tickets weren't there. So, in one of the world's busiest train stations, I frantically dragged Rusty to and fro searching for the proper bus terminal so that we could explain how dumb we were to the bus people. Rusty was carrying a 50-pound bag and so was, hmmm, not so happy with me. With 2 minutes before departure, we arrived at the terminal sweating and frantic, and explained that we had lost our tickets. The attendant seemed calm and friendly, and I asked him to hold the bus for us, which he did. I thought everything was hunky-dory, he said something about a $1 fee, and I thought, "My gosh, we're saved." But then he said, "Oh yes yes, Nakatsugawa is only 9000 yen (about $80). I protested, but it didn't seem to be going anywhere. We grudgingly coughed up a lot of money, having already paid for the other tickets, and raced behind an attendant as he parted the seas of people to make way for the drunken, stupid foreigners who lost their tickets. We made it to the bus with not a moment to spare, in fact 5 minutes after it was supposed to leave. I sat on the bus metaphorically kicking myself, because if there are two things I love it's a well-executed plan and a bargain, and both had just decidedly flown out the window. My bargain bus ride had just doubled in price. Doh! I vowed to not eat Mos Burger for a month to make up the difference.

Bottom line: Mission Accomplished. We arrived in my hometown at about 4:30am. Rusty instantly observed that it looked "boring" and that it was -4 degrees celsius. Waaaa. We hiked up to my high school in the fureeeeezing cold and Rusty scraped the ice off my car with a Haagan Daz spoon that I keep on hand for these occasions, while I sat in the warm car and monitored. Eventually I gave him my frequent flier card, which worked much better.

Back home, he was slightly less than overjoyed at the very little difference in temperature between inside and outside my house. I think he would have enjoyed a bigger spread. I fixed us up some futons with electric blankets, and after some time, we hit the sack at about 7am. Rusty was whining like a girl at the cold. I was a man about it.

This afternoon, we're off to Hakuba in Nagano Prefecture for the New Years and skiing tomorrow. We will report back after that, with Volume 2 of 'Rusty in Japan: The Legend Begins"

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Fascinating Images

This man is an aid worker who has traveled throughout Afghanistan and Iraq helping the people living there deal with the problems they face as residents of failed and developing states. He seems like a fascinating person, but he is also a gifted photographer. I was moved by a lot of these images, so if you would like a more intimate look at the people who live in these places we see on the news everyday, check out his site:

http://www.ooshan.com/index.htm

Five more days until my lil' brother comes!

The Day of Free Food

On Wednesday, I woke up late, even by my pathetic standards. I had barely enough time to pretend to look like a competent professional, much less prepare a nutritious and savory lunch. Soo I embarked on my day with no plans for lunch but starvation.

Luckily for yours truly, this was to be a day of culinary generosity unseen since my last trip to my Grandma's place.

As if she had pre-sensed my impending hunger, my surrogate step-mom in the office, Ms. Miyake, approached my desk first thing with a very decently-sized meal of home-made curry she had prepared. That would have taken care of lunch, right there. Heck, that's really nice, I thought.

Shortly afterwards I was off to one of the 3rd-year classes, to help them put together some skits in English. (They have split up the third-year classes into those who still have college entrance exams to take and those who have been accepted. The ones who are good to go can take it a little easier for the rest of the year, thus the skits.). At the end of the hour, I couldn't bear the prospect of sitting at my desk for 5 hours, so I decided to actively seek out cultural exchange. I asked them what their next class was. They said 'Cooking.' I thought: I can do that. So, much to their utter confusion, I just didn't leave, and tagged along to the home economics room with them. They seemed to like the idea that I would be spending the day with them, so I didn't feel like an intruder at all. It felt great, actually.

So the cooking room was impressive indeed. There were eight islands, each with a stove, sink, and tons of clean, shiny cooking materials. In the middle of the room were eight clusters of pretty choice-looking ingredients. The teacher graciously provided me with a sweet-looking white chef's coat and funky bandana to keep my beautiful blonde locks out of our rice. I chose a group of students to work with, and then the teacher went to work instructing us on how to make this classic Japanese dish. We made something called 'Oyakodonburi,' which is a confection of soy sauce, sugar, onions, chicken, and some green veggie sauteed together, with a beaten egg then added but only cooked about halfway. This soupy mixture is then poured over a bowl of hot rice, the heat of which finishes cooking the egg. The title means "Parent and Child," which is of course, the chicken and the egg. It was delicious, I must say. We also made a simple soup of fish stock with tofu and veggies. All in all, it was a great meal, and as I sat at the table feasting with my co-chefs, I couldn't help but marvel at my good fortune today.

After that, I headed back to the teachers' room where I was informed that the resident chefstress, the ever-cute Ms. Saito, had prepared a hot soup of sweet red beans, available for all. I headed over there and snatched up a bowl, which was exactly as it should be: hot, sweet, and satisfying.

After all that feasting, I didn't even have room for the original gift of curry, so I put it aside for another day when I was too lazy to provide food for myself. Needless to say, it was a great day, and I was very glad knowing that I had reached out. It seems that every time I reach out, I get something valuable in return. Now that I look back on four months here, I realize how much better I have gotten at just being open and friendly to total strangers, walking up to groups of students and asking if I can join their card game or asking them how their weekend was, etc. I would never do that stuff before. Heck, I had to go to an extra year of kindergarten because I would cry when my parents left me. Here, I was a little afraid that the children had sort of lost interest in me, too occupied with school and their own lives to reach out. A lot of the 3rd-year students I had made friends with when I first came here seemed uninterested or too busy to talk to me. But I have begun to see that almost everyone here wants to interact as much as I do; it just takes initiative. Since these high-schoolers are often a little shy, I consciously try to reach out to them wherever possible, and they almost always seem overjoyed to talk or to show me something. I'm always glad I did it, all it takes is the will to do so.

I hope to steal more of the childrens' food in the future in the name of intercultural exchange.

Sheer Boredom and Its Discontents

To those in the working world: Do not hate me.

Yours truly has been in the midst of a major 4-alarm boredom binge for the last two weeks. Jealous? Well, don't be, because I am BORED! The kiddies had their hardcore midterm exams last week, and so for the week before that, many of my classes were miraculously transformed into extra grammar sessions (for which my games of Jeopardy, picture games, and myself were apparently unnecessary). During testing week there were no classes for anyone, and this week, I have no classes as well for I don't know why. That there is a lot of free time on one's hands. And I have an internet connection...Blast!

If only I were a lazier man (and I am lazy, but not lazy enough) I could truly relish the opportunity to get paid thousands to give myself a first-rate Wikiducation. People spend dozens on books purchased from guys with dollar signs in their top hats just to get to where I am today, but alas, I must have shown some initiative at some point, and so I'm feeling a bit of remorse at being such a well-paid lump. Wouldn't you?

For the first week of nothing, I was ambitious and diligently made daily schedules for myself of tasks that needed accomplishing. But, it's very difficult when you look at the open calendar ahead of you and the urgency just drains right out of your tasks. However, I did put in 3 days of legitimately productive Japanese language study time, finished Book 1 of my JET Program Japanese language course, and even had several grammar-related conversations with other teachers (now if that's not a sign someone's a nerd, I just don't know what is!). I figure it's an unspoken component of my job description that I should try to learn the native tongue, so I don't even have the guilty feelings I get when I read movie reviews.

After that 3-day wonderblast of achievement, my output took a slight downturn towards the Facebook, email, and Wikipedia realms, sadly. But you can attain a great deal of knowledge for free, I've noticed. And the best part is that Wikipedia doesn't discriminate between the highest of high brow and the lowest of low brow. It's entirely possible that an entry for Lindsay Lohan could be much longer and far more lovingly detailed than the entire entry on Mongolia, for example. This is knowledge by the people, for the people, from...a lot of uncited sources. Still, it's wonderfully egalitarian, if prone to ridiculousness.

This week my boredom hit an all-time low and so I resorted to making home-made egg nog for the other teachers to sample. I think we've all been there, the "You're so bored at work that you make egg nog for your co-workers" stage We all go through it at least one time in our life. I'm happy to say the homemade Nog got reviews of "Oishii" ("delicious") all around. I withheld the booze, on account of all those pesky high schoolers around. On a side note, do you know how to make egg nog? It's remarkably simple: just add 6 eggs to 1 quart of nog and you're done. Soooo easy. The hard part is finding the perfect nog, of course.

Do not pity my sloth. I am preparing for my triumphant return to teaching next week by planning a Christmas spectacular the likes of which this country has never seen. Well, actually they do Christmas pretty durned big here, but I will try to infuse the rampant commercialism with just a small injection of soul and tradition. I wanna do something nice for the kids to show them a little bit about what Christmas means to me; of course it's not all pure spending and commercialization, after all. There is still something wonderful about it that I think can be shared.

So that's the news from Nakatsugawa, where all the men are beautiful, the women are strong, and all the children have cute lunchboxes.

Dear readers, I am in the midst of making a larger post about our recent trip to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I guarantee it will knock at least both of your socks off. I also just added some new shots to my photo website, so they are available for perusal at your leisure. I charge 300 yen for each photo viewing now, but email me and I may be able to accept airmailed cookies or beer. I still have to get the final word from my business manager, Andy Taylor of Atlanta, Georgia.

-The Shogun

I will leave you with a beautiful photo of cultural togetherness. I only look about 4 stories taller than Hong. This is why I crack my head on even the doorways in my own house:

At long last.

UCLA has beaten USC 13-9 in football. After all these years of following and covering UCLA sports, I can't tell you how satisfying it is to see the pendulum swing in our direction for once. For years, UCLA's fine sports have dominated USC's, but we never get any credit because of one thing: football. Now, we have bragging rights for a year. Man it feels good.

I give a lot of credit to those guys; that couldn't have been easy; the Trojan football teams and fans alike are relentless and intimidating, but somehow they kept their heads in the game and did what they had to do. My gosh, well done!

007: A Spy Pilgrimage, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Take the Train

As you've no doubt noticed, there is a new James Bond in town, and like me, he's blond! So I felt an instant affinity for the guy. Now, I'm by no means the world's biggest Bond-phile, but I enjoy 007 movies when they're good, which is often, and even when they're bad, which is also often, they're so absurdly stupid that they're good. So I knew I had to check out where they were taking the franchise. I thought Daniel Craig looked kind of cool, and after reading some reviews I was excited to see a leaner, tougher, more bad-ass sort of Bond. I really liked Pierce Brosnan, but I was getting a bit bored of his Bond: too polite; not enough action.

Movies in Japan are a bit more of an affair than they are back home. They have gigantic theaters just like us, it's just that they're more concentrated. My town has plenty of rice fields, but sadly, it was short of multiplexes. So for this Bond-viewing, it was off to the big city for me. I had already driven to Hong's place in Gifu to pick up some tires from a friend, so I figured since I had my car here, I might as well drive into Nagoya. After spending about an hour and a half on the Japanese-version of Google maps, I concluded that there it was a virtual certainty that I would get lost driving. Nagoya is one of the biggest cities in Japan, and there were expressways criss-crossing each other and heading every which way in ways that made my head spin. It was a recipe for disaster. Sadly, I canned my driving plan.

So, I was in for a LOT of public transportation. I was in a kind of pissed off mood from an hour and a half of fruitless cartography (as well as my movie partner cancelling out due to hangover-related problems), and as I rushed out the door and nearly missed the 2:00 train I silently cursed all the Japanese at the train station for being so damn timely. Why am I always the only one running?

So, two train rides later, I was in Nagoya Station. There goes 7 bucks. From here, I still had to catch a subway to the exact opposite side of the city. There goes 3 more bucks. Apparently, this damn Bond movie is only playing in one theater in Nagoya, which the website described as "off the beaten path." Yeah, it was. When I arrived at the station, I realized I was darn far out of wherever I started. It was quiet and pretty ugly-looking, and cold. The movie started at 3:50, and by this point it was about 3:20. Figured I could make it. Maybe walk, but which way? Damn. Better take a bus. After climbing onto no less than 7 buses over the span of an hour, I finally found one that was going my way. There goes another 4 bucks. At about 4:40 I arrived at a giganto-normous mall way off in suburbia and poked around for a frustrated while looking for the movie theater. I was starving. Finally, I found the dang theater and paid my $18 (a steal!) for my Bond ticket. The funny thing about theaters in Japan is that there is assigned seating, so you point to a seat you want on a diagram and then you are supposed to sit in that seat. I rushed to the food court and gulped down the nastiest soup available for $3.80, as well as some discounted fried chicken bits for a buck. Mmmm.

I ran back up to the theater, purchashed a beer (yep, in the theater: This is a major innovation!) and sat back to soak in the action. I made a half-hearted effort to find my appointed seat in the dark, but then realized I didn't like where it was and gallantly flaunted the rules, sitting in a much choicer seat near the front. Luckily, there seemed to be no repurcussions. The movie itself was okay. It certainly addressed my issue of too much talk and not enough action. This was supposed to be Bond at the beginning of it all, and Craig played him as a man of few words, little personality, and lots of dead bodies. It was violent, man! I was a little embarassed for my country's movie industry sitting there in the theater, but then again, he IS British. So, who to blame for this wanton violence? Even the opening credits were kind of disgusting. I think the pendulum may have swung too far from the charming, martini-ordering Bond to the ruthless killer Bond. I was a little put-off. During the lonnnnnng poker game I wandered back into the lobby for tiny beer #2 (there goes another $4.50) which helped me to reasonably enjoy the movie. All in all, it was okay, but honestly I don't know what to think about this Daniel Craig character. I suspect that he's playing Bond really ruthless and personality-less now so that we can see the Bond-ness starting to develop, but I dunno. See it for yourselves. Personally, I think Clive Owen would have made a far better Bond. He's got the same bad-ass edge, but he's got so much more personality. Looking at this guy was like watching a Roman statue speaking one-liners. Maybe in the next movie he'll turn up the personality a notch or two or ten. Hopefully. I say bring Sean Connery back. He's better than all these guys.

After my movie experience, I did feel a little bit like a secret agent in an exotic country, though. I walked around like James Bond for a while, feeling quite covert. Although I don't blend in as well as I imagine, I think. I've only been to Nagoya once, and so before I headed back I walked the area around Nagoya Station. It was beautiful; they had the trees lit up with brilliant blue lights and were showing a slideshow of various sites in England on the building. I guess England = Christmas around here. It was cheesy, but still beautiful, actually. Walking across the street, I saw a strange sight indeed. It was super-windy, like really really windy, and I saw some people in the crosswalk all sort of falling over holding one guy. I thought one person was blown over and they were trying to hold him up. But actually they were trying to restrain him. I realized it when he threw a hard punch at the guy being restrained right in front of him. It had a lot of force to it. I'm guessing the whole lot of them were drunk, which would explain the synchronized stumbling. It was kind of a shocker to see a fight; you don't see that kind of stuff very much around here.

I finished my one-man date with some delicious donuts from Mister Donut and a tasty espresso in a coffee shop and enjoyed the urban experience for a little while longer. Afterwards I headed back to the train station for the ride back to Gifu. Not a bad day, all in all. Total cost for the Bond movie: $14 in trains, $6 in subways, $8 in buses, $18 in ticket price, and $9 in beer. $55. Yowza! I'm still trying to decide if it was worth it. Mayyyyybe.

I will leave you with this truly awesome poster on the train. I miss everyone; hope you're doing well!

Kyoto, Japan

This past weekend we took our long-awaited trip to Kyoto! Kyoto, generally considered to be the chunks of meat in the heady cultural stew that is Japan, was the nation's capital for a spell back in the, I'll say, 700s-ish. It was the home of the emperor until 1869, but he chills in Tokyo now. Anyway, it's where the good stuff is, if you like amazing beautiful things, or Geishas, or both.

First we had a 1-day Mid-Year conference for JETs held in Gifu City. It was a day of workshops that made you want to gouge your eyes out, speeches that inspired homicidal thoughts, and some very non-happy campers. I don't know what it is, but for some reason when you stuff 150 of us together into a room, we just sit around and complain about teaching in Japanese schools. Now, it certainly is difficult to teach here; the system for teaching English is full of problems; but hey, they pay us a boatload of money to come here and basically be ourselves for a year, so I'm not too inclined to complain! I'm quite happy other than when I'm forced to sit down and pore over my teaching experience; I prefer to just take it as it comes and not over-think it. But, like I said, something about sticking us all together makes us champion whiners. Probably because the line between annoying traits and endearing quirks is so fine, we just start out trading stories about our jobs which then eventually mutate into full-fledged bitching. Like, "Hey, do your students sleep through class? Mine too! Those lazy bastards!" Anyway, I suffered through the conference, and just about kicked my heels in joy when it was over: We were off to Kyoto!



We hopped on the not-so-early 10:00 train the next day and clanked along the local tracks for a couple hours until we reached Kyoto (not those fancy Bullet Trains you've heard so much about...those bad boys are expensive!). The station seemed rather smallish and very confusing, but then we turned a corner and it was like walking through a broom closet to find a cathedral. The place all of a sudden opened up into an absolutely cavernous space, with futuristic tubes connecting the upper floors to each other, and with a way-cool 10-floor escalator going, it seemed, into the sky. It turns out that the station is rather new, and is a crazy gigantic department store/station/massive restaurant area. The department store is 10 stories tall, and it's built right into the side of the train station. Not what I was expecting for a city famous for 1000-year old temples, but hey.



The city was at first glance, like pretty much all Japanese cities, rather ugly. It was an endless expanse of concrete and blocky buildings. But hiding in there somewhere was 2,000 years worth of history and untold numbers of treasures just waitin for us to discover them. But at the time, we were a little fooled by the drab first impression.

After visiting a very busy and very under-contruction temple near the station, we took a walk through some rather uglyish streets to Sanjusangendo temple. There were two things about this place I really dug. The first was that most of it was painted this funky bright orange:
This was special because it was so darn unusual. The Japanese love the look of weathered, beat-up wood, and most temples look, and are, quite old. This one was like, Screw That, I am going to be bright orange. Bravo, Sanjusangendo! They broke the mold when they made you. The most amazing thing about this temple is the 1,001 carved wooden sculptures contained in its main hall, at over 330 feet long, the longest wooden building in Japan. Each sculpture has a different face, and it is said that if you look at enough of them you can recognize the faces of friends. It was true. They seemed so similar, but after a while a face would just jump out at you. It was weird. It was easily one of the most awe-inspiring sights I've ever seen. If you're ever in Japan, I insist you go here. Here is a photo of the 1,001 statues, all of Kannon, otherwise known as the Goddess of Mercy:

For dinner that night, we went to a Korean restaurant. I'd never had Korean food before, but Hong watches their movies all the time and seemed almost quasi-knowledgable about Korean culture. The menu had no pictures and was in Japanese, so we couldn't read it. Now, it's worth noting that I usually make fun of Hong for having such terrible Japanese, but somehow she managed to order us a full Korean dinner pretty quickly. What showed up was truly delicious: a Korean beef dish called bulgogi, with about 6 plates of sides, including delicious kimchee, a type of pickled cabbage. Trust me, it's a lot better than it sounds.



The next morning, we got a good early start and walked down the road to Toji Temple. The temple grounds were truly peaceful in the early morning light, and we almost had the place to ourselves for a while, before more tourists and worshippers began to trickle in.
Inside one of the temples was a small exhibit of artworks by a local guy. They were absolutely beautiful, and the little old lady who was attending to it was very kind indeed, and spoke a bit of English. She was very interested in where we were from, and seemed quite happy that we were looking at the pictures. I would have thought that in such an international city, foreign tourists wouldn't be a big deal, but she was ridiculously welcoming just the same. Wherever you are, ma'am, thanks for the nice morning.

Here is the tallest pagoda in Japan, at Toji Temple. It is 186 feet tall:
























Next was Kiyomizudera temple, one of the most famous temples in Kyoto, which has (I think) thousands. It is tucked away in the eastern hills of the city, and its waters, if drank, are said to confer good luck and healing (sharing the cups is a little gross, though) The place was at the top of a long hill, and it was HOPPING. The serenity and peacefulness of the first temple were not to be found; this was more like Disneyland, but crowded. Most of the temple was built directly into the hillside, but the main building was constructed on these way-cool stilts. There were a hell of a lot of people there, so I hope those monks knew what they were doing 400 years ago.





While we were there, some Geisha decided to show up, which made quite a stir. I don’t know for sure if they were ‘real’ Geisha, as there are lots of places in Kyoto that will completely transform a Japanese girl into a “Geisha” for 3 hours of make-believe, but it was more fun to assume they were. They were at the temple to be photographed, and in addition to the photographer with them, they had at least 20 tourists snapping photos of them at all times. I decided to take the moral high ground and leave them in peace, but Hong has the tenacious spirit of the Asian Market Lady running through her blood, so she went right up and snapped away without shame. I must admit, it’s a great picture.


The next stop on our magical mystery tour was Genkokuji, also known as the Silver Pavilion. There is another, more famous “Golden Pavilion” on the other side of town, but being non-conformists, we decided silver is better. We weren’t the only ones with this sentiment.
This place, too, was packed. That didn’t stop it from being pretty darned awesome, though. It was a Zen temple, so it had tons of carefully raked sand patterns, just like in the movies, but it also had a whole landscaped hillside covered in dozens of types of beautiful mosses. These temple gardens take moss to a whole new plateau of attention. Moss is the carpet of Japanese gardens; it fills in the blanks and ties all the elements together in a most appealing way. At Genkokuji, they even have an exhibit of good mosses (“VIP Mosses”) and bad mosses, I guess so you can tell which ones are meant to be there and which ones are the dreaded invaders. You never expect this kind of humor at a temple, but apparently they can be very funny places:

The hillside had a sort of fantastical look about it that I really liked:
























Later that night, we met up with our friends Leanne and Maren, and headed to Kyoto Station for some refreshment. We dined on beignets from none other than Café du Monde, the famous New Orleans landmark! How did a coffee shop from New Orleans end up with a branch in a Japanese train station? You tell me. Either way, they were pretty darned good, and I was very, very surprised. I’m happy to say, I made beignet fans out of all three ladies.


Our next and final stop was Chion-in, the headquarters temple of the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism. This sect has like 6 million believers and about 6,000 temples, so I assume that Chion-in is a pretty important place. They had a pretty awesome garden, but to be quite honest, by this point we were all a little templed out. Apparently the threshold for appreciating temples is five. After that, the magic begins to fade a little bit, which is a terrible feeling, because you know they are beautiful but just can’t interest yourself so much.



As we headed to the train platform for our long ride home, dusk was creeping in on the city and long shadows pierced the golden light of late afternoon. It had been a good weekend, and I felt like I had just bathed in the richness of the country’s heritage. It is a heritage worth seeing; the visitors in Kyoto were from all over the world. I think the best part, though, was visiting these places alongside thousands of Japanese visitors and knowing that this trip was as special to them as it was to me. In a world that is changing more rapidly everyday, by visiting the sites of their culture’s greatest treasures, they were securing their moorings to their own past, just as I was discovering a past I hadn’t ever really considered. For I have to admit, I was beginning to get a little tired of hearing about the “richness” of Japanese culture, but after my trip to Kyoto, I plan to shut my mouth. That city is a treasure.

Ahhhh!

I woke up this morning to find this outside my window! I am officially screwed. For the uninitiated, that is snow. It's in the mountains...and we're not that far away. It's only a matter of time before the icy hands of Father Winter are clutching at my paper windows. Dang it!

Yes, it is starting to get colder here. I was told that Autum would progress peacefully along, the leaves would start to change, and then, in Mid-November, it would one day suddenly become very, very cold and stay that way for the next four months. Well, they weren't lying.

It has officially gotten cold here. Literally one day it was nice and comfortable, and the next day my nipples were permanently hard. The hallways and bathrooms at the schools are like iceboxes. I half expect my urine to freeze in mid-stream while I'm going. Luckily, the teachers' room has a heater (it's nice to be a little higher up on the totem pole). Whichever students survive the winter get to progress to the next grade. My apartment has no such thing heater, though. I instead have a device called a kotatsu that is basically a coffee table with a heating implement and a removable top. You turn it on, toss a big blanket over it, and basically don't move much for four months. I am also going to buy a kerosene heater to heat the house, but I don't know how effective it will be. Even if it doesn't warm you, though, it's guaranteed to flood your home with the rich, soothing aroma of kerosene, or your money back. I'm planning to move all my stuff to the "warm" side of the apartment and just pretend that the extra rooms don't exist for the Winter. Too dang cold.

But, I'm kind of excited for the cold. I truly hate snow and ice and winter-related things if they are too intense. I prefer San Francisco-style winters: nice and brisk, but your car won't be sliding down the hill either. I think this will be a good hardy test for me. If I make it through alive, I will try to make another post to tell you how it was. See you in four months...

Kashi Matsuri

Today we went to a festival right up the road from my house. It was the Kashi Matsuri, a festival to celebrate the art of kashi-making.

To tell you the truth, I really don't know how kashi is made, but these pictures show you how remarkable it is. Basically, there are tons of sculptures -- of flowers, animals, pine trees, and here, people and houses. Here's the trick, though: they're all made of rice.

Pretty amazing, huh? The rice is somehow processed into these sheets, and then it is transformed into an amazing variety of shapes and textures. From delicate leaves to pointy pine needles, it pretty much all looked so real that if you saw it in nature you wouldn't give it a double take. It is another case of me being blown away by small, ingenious, carefully made things of beauty. Nice work guys.

Enjoy the photos!

The Night of the $35 Beef

For the last month or so, I have gone out every Thursday night with my friend Anthony, whom we call "Godfather" because if you squint one eye he sort of looks like Luke Wilson, who was "Godfather" in Old School. First, we go grab some dinner, usually carniverous in nature, then we head to a little restaurant called Annie Hall, where a group of people gather on Thursday nights to hang out and speak English.

The first time we went on one of our outings, we headed first to a restaurant called "Prince Matsuba." I don't know why it's called that. It's quite fantastical-looking, with huge turrets and spires and stained glass. The inside looks like the set of a King Arthur movie. I have a feeling that the inspiration might have come from watching something like that. Anyway, Godfather has been in Japan since 2004, but he's not too skilled at or interested in learning new languages specifically, Japanese) and so his communicational skills are, well, improvisational to say the best. We sat down and he asked the waitress "Menu? English?" Hmmm, no, don't have those. So he just said the word "STEAK" and luckily all the steak-related words are basically English in disguise, since it's a foreign and not Japanese food. So we were going to get "Siruloin" medium-rare. Not bad.

The steak came, and my, it was fan-tastic. Probably the first real meat I've had in Japan. It was big, rare, and delicious. The fun came to an end, though, when we were eating and enjoying it and suddenly got to thinking...I wonder how much this costs? I mean, simple logic says that if noodles and a few shrimp cost $13, then a big piece of premium steak can't be cheap. We found a price list sitting on the side of the table, where the bottom value was $25 and the top was $35. Dang it!

Sure enough, when we went to pay, $38 a person it was. Damn the Godfather! Just another case of unexpectedly treating yourself to a fine and expensive meal. At least in this case, unlike the eel, the steak was truly fantastic. But my anger at the Godfather simmered until it was at least medium-rare.

Absentee's Anger

Apparently, absentee voters aren't as important as regular voters. Read on to hear my thoughts on this issue.

me: man i'm confused
i just got my absentee ballot for san diego
but i can only vote for federal offices
so just senator and representative
no local people?
what's up with that?
Andrea: i have nooo idea
me: come on
you were a poli sci major!
Andrea: i forgot to apply for absentee ballot
you know i barely got out of there witht hat major
me: you disgrace the polisci profession
your professors are hanging their heads
Andrea: well im not going into poli sci
they should
they were bastards
me: ahhh
Andrea: yea didnt like most of them
i have no idea why you cant vote for local people
maybe because you are doing an absentee thing
me: that makes no sense though
i feel kind of disenfranchised
it's a strange feeling
Andrea: awww
white boy disenfranchised
hahaha, thats a new one
me: this is the most effort i have contributed to democracy in like 5 years
and what do i get
i didnt even vote in the presidential election
and now that i'm in JAPAN
i cant vote for san diego water commisioner
Andrea: im seriously laughing my ass off
me: or the school board wackos
Andrea: LOL
i can imagine you right now like a hurt little puppy
pouty and so sad
me: yarrr

Images of Beauty

I don't want to give the impression that everywhere you look in Japan you find a tranquil Zen garden or a majestic waterfall. But, these things are all around for the finding, if you look for them. I tend of course to write about the more beautiful things I have seen, and though I try to be even-handed and cover all aspects of my experience here, I like beautiful places. So this post will be devoted to beauty.

Last weekend, we visited the city of Tajimi and visited the Eihoji Zen Temple, part of the Rinzai denomination of Buddhism. Okay that last part might have been too much information, except for all 2 of you Buddhists out there. For everyone else, it's the place where the dudes in the robes hang out.

A quick aside. It was Hong's birthday nearly a month ago, but due to some poor strategic planning my birthday dinner for her consisted of microwaved soup and Ritz crackers from a convenience store. More on that later. Anyway, I told her I'd make it up to her, so we met in Tajimi (halfway between us) and went trolling for restaurants in my car. On some random street we smelled the intoxicating aroma of...roasting beef! Oh my, we had to stop. But, since we can't read the signs on restaurants, we didn't know which one was which. We followed our noses to one and headed in. We sat down. Shit, no pictures on the menu. This is dangerous. After much verbal confusion with the waitress, she lost patience with us and transferred us to her more English-proficient colleague. Turns out all this restaurant serves is eel. Shit, that's it. Just eel. I promised Hong steak. Crap, well, can't leave, that would be too rude. So, I tell her that this is not the birthday lunch anymore, and therefore we can split the tab. Eel comes, it's not bad really. We go to pay the bill, and she asks if we want separate bills. We do. She rings up $18. Oh, there must be some mistake, we asked for separate bills. Nope. It's $18 a person. That's some motivation to learn Japanese right there. Know what you're paying for.

So anyway we drove to the Eihoji Temple and walked around and it was quite lovely. I love temples and gardens. Maybe it's my escapist side that doesn't want to deal with the outside world, but I don't think I'm happier than when I'm in a tranquil garden, isolated for a moment from modernity, responsibility, cars, politics, concrete buildings. Something about a place of beauty in the middle of a much uglier, much grittier world makes me feel good. In one sense, this makes it even harder to accept what you find when you leave its gates, but I think of it as refilling my 'bowl of goodness.' Some moments spent in quiet appreciation of beauty are never wasted, even though they must inevitably end.
This particular temple was built into the side of a mountain, and as we made our way up the trail, we could see spectacular rays of light coming through the trees (not this tree...sorry!). It was like nothing I've ever seen before. It looked as if E.T. were landing above us, it was so intense. I let my imagination run wild a little bit and wondered if maybe there were something there.

We did find something unusual. A huge Goddess of Mercy, a Buddhist goddess. Hong has a jade necklace with the some one, so it was a nice surprise. She's always saying how the Japanese Buddhism is so different from hers, so it was cool to find something familiar.

Yesterday we drove up to Tsukechi, a beautiful place up in the mountains around the city I live in. I got lost many times, and it was mildly terrifying driving on those tiny roads with ridiculous cliffs and lots of loose, scattered leaves (the better to lose traction with, my dear!). Finally, though, I found what I was looking for, a gorge with high-strung walking bridges and precarious paths hundreds of feet above crystal blue water. I can't describe how much I like it, so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. This place was where I went into the forest in Japan for the first time when I first arrived here, and thus it has a special feeling for me. It is a powerful, beautiful place, and one of my favorites in Japan.
















The fall colors are beginning to change. Beautiful.















The leaves in this forest are so delicate and luminous.















You can get a sense for the scale of these bridges. The whole place has a Peter Pan Treehouse feel to it. It's a wonderful place for the imagination.

Our Okinawan Journey, Phase Alpha

When we decided to take a trip for our birthdays, we narrowed it down to Japan's extremes: it was either going to be Hokkaido or Okinawa. It turns out that Hokkaido is so cold that by late September it would already be too much. Tropical Okinawa it was, then.

Thanks to a neat little Japan Air Lines birthday discount, we got tickets to Okinawa for $120 a leg - Not bad considering they're usually about $400. Yes, travel in Japan is almost never cheap, but sometimes you get lucky and find a bizarro discount, like 15% off if you travel with your grandma on the 3rd friday of a leap year--that kind of stuff.

Our journey began early Saturday morning on the 23rd. Our flight was leaving from the new Nagoya Centrair airport, built on an artificial island in Nagoya Harbor. I left my house in a hurry on my mountain bike at about 5:15, late for my train as per usual. It was an inauspicious beginning for such a large trip, but you've gotta begin somewhere I suppose. I raced down the hill toward the station like I was flying. This was the morning after the office enkai, so I was not in the best of conditions. Hong and I somehow managed to rendezvous in Nagoya and find our way to the airport, where we boarded a spiffy-looking 747 bound for Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture.

I had an embarassing encounter on the plane when I decided to try out some of my newly minted Japanese phrases. I asked the guy sitting next to me, in the politest form, 'Where are you from?' He responded, of course, but I couldn't understand the name of the place (I'd probably never heard of it). It turns out I couldn't understand anything he said after that, so eventually I just sort of faced forward and waited for it to be over. You can't win 'em all, I guess. But still, how embarassing. I tried not to let it get me down.

The first thing that struck me in Okinawa was the stifling heat. It reminded me of how brutal mainland Japan was 2 months ago. All the sweat and frustration came back in full swing. However, this was tempered by the beauty of the place. The ocean is delightfully aquamarine and makes you glad every time you look at it. Naha itself is a pretty bustling city. It looked pretty much like any other Japanese city, except it had a really nifty monorail, which I haven't seen anywhere else. We used it like mad. We walked around and browsed the schlocky souvenir shops for a while, marveled at the amazingly high prices, and then navigated our way to Shuri-jo Castle, the former capital of the Ryukyu Kingdom. (A sidenote: before 1879, the Ryukyu Islands--all the islands south of Kyushu and north of Taiwan--were an independent kingdom. But in 1879 the greedy Japanese snatched up the islands for their own, perhaps sensing their future tourism needs. Then from the end of World War II until the early 1970s, Okinawa was controlled by the U.S. It is again part of Japan, though about 20% of the land on the main island is still given over to U.S. bases.

Looking for Shuri-jo was surprisingly difficult, given that it was on the biggest hill in the place. I found what I considered to be a genius shortcut, but due to the castle's, er, extensive fortifications, we walked right up to it, but at such a place as one could not enter. We had to walk all the way back down the hill and walk around to the other side of the whole affair. Let me tell you, it was FAR. The castle itself was fairly cool. Sadly, it was destroyed in World War II, like so much of this country's heritage, but it was lovingly rebuilt in 1992. You would never guess it, let me tell you. It feels old and it feels solid. Inside the building I could really sense the history that had happened there, even though the building was new. Some places have a memory stronger than physical materials.

The next stop on our itinerary was the island of Kume-jima, 90 kilometers to the west of Okinawa. I had high expectations for this place, especially since it would be my birthday and I wanted to have fun. We managed to find the ferry harbor AND purchase ferry tickets (these are small miracles, let me tell you), and boarded for our 4-hour journey into the East China Sea. While we were headed over there, I tried to imagine all the things that had taken place in these waters; envoys and traders from China in junks, American battleships cruising for enemy Japanese, maybe pirates? It was so exciting to be so far from home, out on the open ocean, finding someplace new. I felt very grown-up.

Our relationship with this island turned out to be fairly complex. At first sight, it looked quite beautiful. We caught a bus from the ferry terminal to what our guidebook, Lonely Planet, described as 'the' place to stay on the island, Ifu Beach. Needless to say, when we stepped off the bus, I thought there must be some mistake. We were dropped at the "Eef Beach Hotel," which, judging from the amount of people who got off the bus and went inside, was 'the' only place to stay in Ifu Beach. It looked pretty crappy. We walked around back and asked someone how to find the hotel we were looking for. They drew us a map. It turns out we hardly needed it. Ifu Beach is not a city on the scale which demands maps. It just takes fingers. We walked about 50 feet up the street and found the place.

We walked inside and it looked clean and nice enough. A man stood in the lobby doing something, and when we entered, it took him a while to notice that we might want something. He approached the desk and I took a deep breath and read from my pre-prepared sheet of 'hotel Japanese.' To everything I said, he replied with a terrified stare. Even when I knew it made sense, it was just Stare. He almost looked like it would make his entire year if we would just slowly back up, walk away, and not make him speak English any more. But, persistence paid off and 10 confusing minutes later we had a simple room, directions to the shower, and some peace and quiet. Now at this point I was not super-thrilled, I'm not gonna lie. The beach was quite beautiful, but the town seemed boring at best and really boring at worst. It didn't seem like 'the' place in any sense. It didn't help that I was hot, sweaty, stinky, and that it was my birthday. Hong and I were both a little afraid to admit that we had made a big mistake in coming here. We cursed Lonely Planet for leading us astray and vowed to exact vengeance upon its foolish authors.

We headed out to the beach to see what we could see. Saw some sand, some water, and some clouds. All of it quite lovely, of course. But...we were bored. We decided to head off to tiny O-jima island nearby to see "a natural formation of pentagon-shaped rocks that covers the seashore but can only be seen at low tide." It was exciting enough to get us moving. To get there was surprisingly difficult. To get to the bridge to the island required walking a bit inland and also crossing what turned out to be the bottom of a low-tide zone. We didn't know all this when we started, of course. It looked so close...

As we walked and walked, with each turn discovering anew just how far away the entrance to the bridge was, we became filled with despair and frustration. This reached a fever pitch when we realized we had to walk through the squishy, muddy, nasty bottom of a marina to cross it. As our shoes sunk into the soft dirt and we hopped over puddles, we became increasingly not happy. When we had to cross a small concrete stream to get to the road, I hit my low point when I slipped on moss, dropping my backpack (with $1,000 Nikon) and only shoes into the water, cutting my toe and bruising my foot in the process. I silently cursed this island for being so terrible and Lonely Planet for not being honest with us.

After my shoes became unusable, it was barefoot for me. I don't mean to whine, but man it was painful. Of course this only added to my increasing sense of anger that we were stuck on such an inhospitable, beat-up little berg in the middle of the sea, on my birthday no less! We finally made it to the interesting rock formations, which were okay. I would have liked them a lot more if I hadn't suffered bodily damage to find them. I took my first dip in the East China Sea/western Pacific, relaxed in the warm, shallow water for a while and used my imagination. Sometimes when I'm in the ocean at an island I like to think how far it is to anywhere else. Something about being on an island makes me acutely aware of just where I am. So as I sat in the water I wondered, how far to home, to Japan, to China?
















We headed back to our hotel, cleaned up, and headed out to try and find a little food and excitement for the evening. Much to our surprise, the place was hopping. Cozy, inviting restaurants lined the street and happy-looking people inside seemed to be enjoying themselves. What a change from earlier! We were mildly giddy as we walked down the street, feeling for the first time all day that we weren't the only people on this whole island. We found a nice restaurant, ordered a beer and some Okinawan food, and sat in amazement at our pleasant reversal of fortunes. The food was great, the waitresses were friendly, and the atmosphere was comfortable. I was beginning to like this place.

We began to see that this island had charms that weren't so apparent. Like its people. If the people in Okinawa were more friendly than those in mainland Japan, those on Kume-jima were even more friendly than those in Okinawa. The pace of life was very slow and relaxed. On the way back from O-jima, a bus driver saw us walking and stopped to ask if we wanted a ride, and a group of high school-age boys gave us a warm and hearty "Hello!" when they thought we had said Hi to them (we were actually saying hi to a small, cute little boy who was on the other side of the road...they were just walking by...oops!). Still, I was touched that they turned around and all said hi. It was great. The place was obviously not so well-off, and so the fast-paced lifestyle which in many other parts of Japan is the norm seemed very far away from here. It turned out to be a great birthday.

The next morning it was back to Okinawa for us. Good-bye, Kume-jima! We hardly knew ye! I think out of all the places we visited on this trip, it was hardest to leave this one.
















Back on Okinawa, we rented a Honda Fit hybrid and set out to find some places in the guidebook. I hadn't anticipated that traffic would be as bad as it really was. We couldn't get anywhere. Plus, our on-board navigation system was in Japanese (no real surprise there, even though the employee diligently spent about 7 minutes explaining how to use its myriad functions). We spent hours arguing over directions and schedules and ended up pretty much getting nowhere we wanted to. We decided to cut our losses and just headed straight for the top of Okinawa, so we could say that we had been to the most northern point ("Of course you went to the north tip of Okinawa, right? It's all the rage!"). But it was far, and night fell. Needless to say, some of the magic of Okinawa's beauty is lost at night. Driving there and back seemed remarkably like driving at night anywhere else. It was long, tedious, and boring, but somehow it had a sense of adventure to it, so Hong and I enjoyed ourselves for at least the first part, before it got to be really a slog.

The northernmost point on the island was just that. A point that was the most north. We were a little let down, but what could we really expect? We got out of the car and stared at the stars for several minutes. It was breathtaking, actually, and after seeing those stars I just couldn't be upset.

The next day we headed off to our next destination, Ishigaki, about 400 kilometers away. I will cover that next time. Happy trails till then!

For expanded photos and commentary from our trip, please go to http://community.webshots.com/user/viewfromjapan, my photo-sharing website.