Doing these things that I do

Tuesday was a national holiday (Autumn Equinox Day), so I decided the best use of my time would be a bike ride with Kendall and her host dad. I woke up way too early for a holiday (645, much earlier than I ever have to get up for school) so I could meet them at the bike rental shop. I rented a sweet red mountain bike and off we went. Kobayashi-san led us through some neighborhoods until we started going up Kitayama (lit. Northern Mountain). We reached two different peaks and passed through a couple really beautiful towns in the middle of nowhere on this enormous mountain. The roads were lined with incredibly beautiful forests. 

Wednesday was my first taiko practice. I'm not quite sure how to describe this experience. I felt both like a complete outsider but also immensely comfortable. Everyone was so skillful at drumming! A couple of middle-aged women helped me out a lot--not just with rhythms but also with buying the special socks that I will need for playing taiko for the rest of the year. One really cool bald guy spoke really great English, and he was really helpful with providing me with sheet music of rhythms that I need to learn and try to internalize before the next practice. 

"In Zen it is said: 'After satori is the same as before satori.' Before undertaking religious training, mountains are mountains, willows are green, blossoms are crimson. During practice, however, mountains are no longer mountains, nor willows green, nor blossoms crimson. Passing beyond this, again the mountains are mountains, willows are green, blossoms crimson; but these blossoms open in no-mind and scatter in no-mind, free of the impositions of our attachments. Though they appear the same, one has emerged into a world transformed."

Today I relaxed a bit, only the second day in almost four weeks that I have slept later than 930. I got my homework out of the way and went into Kyoto for a Doshisha/AKP mixer party that was actually a lot more fun than I had thought it was going to be. It was at this weird Mexican restaurant with pretty terrible food (I kept thinking about that last burrito I had a few days before I left California). But, it was nomi-hodai (all you can drink) so after a little bit everyone was makka-iro (this literally means 'too-red color' but sort of translates to Asian glow). I met lots of random people and could almost feel my language skills improving. I know I must be better at speaking Japanese now than I used to be, because even last week I would have had absolutely no idea how to communicate the idea of a beer jacket in Japanese. 

After the party, my friends and I went with a bunch of new Japanese friends down to the river. We were going to hang out and talk but I was almost immediately distracted by the sounds of nearby drums. For the past few weeks I have been wondering where all the live music in this city is, and now I know it is at the river at Sanjo: a drumming/fire dancer group called Asobi (this is a play on words: 'asobi' means 'to play', but the character for 'bi' has been replaced with the 'bi' that means 'fire') that plays there most Saturday nights. I was completely transfixed on the drummers, and met some of them in between songs. Live music is really going to heal the world (and I guess fire dancing won't hurt either). They are playing at a music festival tomorrow that I really want to go to, but I already have plans to visit the Suntory whiskey factory. (More nomi-hodai?)

Cities

I have been going on runs around my neighborhood in Uji, a town just south of Kyoto. When I first saw my neighborhood, I thought it was really pretty. I still do, but now I see that it is pretty in the same way that parts of Marin are pretty. The houses all look different from each other, but thats pretty much all there is: lots of houses. It's the same typical suburbia. By the station there are a few streets with some good-looking bars, restaurants, and shops, but the train line I live on (Kintetsu) serves mostly commuters. Although I am geographically close to the big tourist attractions in Uji, I am very far by public transportation (I have to take either a train two stops south and then a bus, or a train three stops north and then another train a couple stops east). 

Yesterday my host dad took me (by three trains) to Nara, another city south of Kyoto. We saw a lot of old Japanese buildings, most notably Todaiji, the great Buddha Hall, which contains the biggest Buddha statue I have ever seen (although not the biggest one in the world, apparently there is a bigger one in Thailand). We also, notably, went to Kasuga Taisha, a really beautiful Shinto shrine in the middle of a forest that has at its center a 1000-year-old tree. Nara has tons of old Japanese buildings all right next to each other, and is very specifically a different city than Kyoto. But I wonder, is it really a different city? These cities are intricately connected by train. The rail lines and roads all lead to each other, going back and forth in a complex network that I am unable to decipher. I know I live in Uji, but when I go to school in the morning, I get on a train at Ogura and get off at Imadegawa and somewhere in between I cross the boundary into Kyoto, but where is that line? 

Last night, I sat outside the Karasuma-Shijo station in downtown Kyoto for about 25 minutes and did nothing but actively people-watch. The waves of people coming and going was really interesting. I saw people meeting their friends, I saw couples holding hands, I saw shoppers entering and exiting the bourgeois malls, I saw waves of school-kids in uniforms, I saw old people everywhere, I saw people that were having good days and people that were having bad days. 

Today, my Landscape Gardens class took a field trip to Saihoji, a Zen temple and moss garden in the forest in western Kyoto. I had not yet been to that part of the city, and when we left the station at Kami-Katsura, I asked, are we still in Kyoto? The train journey had been about 45 minutes from school, and the neighborhood looked totally different from what I was used to. Kyoto is a big city... 

here's what Italo Calvino has to say about this: 

Continuous Cities 2

If on arriving at Trude I had not read the city's name written in big letters, I would have thought I was landing at the same airport from which I had taken off. The suburbs they drove me through were no different from the others, with the same little greenish and yellowish houses. Following the same signs we swung around the same flower beds in the same squares. The downtown streets displayed goods, packages, signs that had not changed at all. This was the first time I had come to Trude, but I already knew the hotel where I happened to be lodged; I had already heard and spoken my dialogues with the buyers and sellers of hardware; I had ended other days identically, looking through the same goblets at the same swaying navels. 

Why come to Trude? I asked myself. And I already wanted to leave. 

"You can resume your flight whenever you like," they said to me, "but you will arrive at another Trude, absolutely the same, detail by detail. The world is covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the name of the airport changes."

yatsubuchi no taki

Firstly: what is Japanese breakfast? Sometimes it is toast made from bread baked by my homestay mom. Sometimes it is Japanese cereal--strange fruit granola, very strange chocolate/banana cereal, or pretty normal corn flakes. The milk is different, somehow, but also the same. Sometimes Japanese breakfast is a delicious egg creation. I always drink (surprisingly really great) orange juice and sometimes coffee (even though apparently you aren't supposed to drink these at the same time?)

More importantly: yesterday I went on an epic hike at Yatsubuchi no taki with friends Richard, Kendall, and Hannah. Taki means waterfall, aptly named, because the first half of the hike consisted of going up a river canyon gorge, climbing up/around seven or eight waterfalls. WHAT?!?! Someone long ago installed chains and ropes so we could rappel up rock faces, and hand holds and bolts so we could scamper up rocks, and wooden bridges so we could transverse huge divides. At times it seemed a little dangerous....and not just from the hiking. When we saw some enormous and terrifying spiders I knew we were for sure on the Island. Some hikers told us not to go on a specific trail because there were angry wasps ahead. They gave us an order and told us it was important but we didn't listen, and unfortunately Richard got bitten a couple times by these monstrous creatures (at least it wasn't the smoke demon, right?). We also saw some adders, but snakes are polite and quietly slithered away. 

Monsters aside, this hike was probably the best hike I have ever done. As we went up the canyon, each waterfall became progressively bigger, cooler, and more fun to climb around. We stopped towards the top for a bento lunch break (thanks host mom). We followed the top of the ridge for a while and then made our way down to Lake Biwa (the largest lake in Japan, in Shiga prefecture, about an hour from Kyoto). We didn't end up exactly where the guidebook told us we would be, but we were determined to swim in the lake, so it was a bit of a walk at the end of the hike. And the lake was glorious. 

We played Kings on the train back to Kyoto. 

Bicycle Universe

Yesterday was just the day that I needed. I had just begun to ask myself, what am I doing in this country? Several things began to fall into place. 

Firstly, Japanese review class was the easiest so far this week. I am continually becoming more and more confident with my speaking ability of this crazy language. Today I had part 1 of placement testing, the oral interview. I think it went pretty well, the conversation was smooth, but I didn't use any impressive or advanced grammar. Tomorrow is the written placement test, and whatever class I place into is probably where I belong. No matter what, I will know Japanese a lot better at the end of this year than I do now. 

After lunch, I had a few hours to kill before class, so I rented a bike from the AKP office. This is a free and painless process, and I am always looking for reasons to chat with the office staff. On a whim I chose bike number 11, I signed the rental form, I got a bike lock key, went downstairs, unlocked the bike, put my backpack in the basket, and off I went. OH MAN!!! Biking in Kyoto is sort of scary, but my bike hour was incredible. Biking is really the best way to explore this city. It is so flat, and everyone rides bikes, and the sidewalks are so wide... It's too big to properly explore by foot, and of course I'm not driving. The trains and subways are really great, but limiting. They go a lot of places I want to go, but not everywhere. When I figure out the buses I think I will be really set. Today after the oral interview I took off on bike again for maybe an hour and 45 minutes. Who even knows where I went? Down a street, turn left, keep going, turn left again somewhere, keep going, find the river, bike along the river.... for a while I played a really fun game I made up called Bike Stalker, which is exactly what it sounds like. Every so often the person I would be following would turn and I would keep going until I found another bicycle to follow. It is so easy to ride bike!! I want to start taking bicycle excursions in the middle of the day to shrines and temples near Doshisha. 

After Bicycle Hour, I had my first Japanese Landscape Gardens class. This is going to be an amazing class. Every class section from now on is a field trip to a different garden somewhere in Kyoto. I will have to draw sketches and write a few pages on the sense-qualities that resonated with me for each place we visit. We read an excerpt from a Tom Brown Jr. book discussing how to experience moments with all five senses (naturally I was the only one in the class that had heard of or read anything by Tom Brown Jr.). We also received a supplementary class bibliography and I was pleased to see that A Pattern Language was first on the list. (If I had known it was in the AKP library, though, I probably wouldn't have schlepped my copy all the way from California). 

To really complete my day, I went to a Taiko dojo last night. A friend in the program's host mom used to (or still does? I couldn't really follow a lot of what was said at the dojo) play with them, and the three of us went to watch their practice. I didn't think I would be able to play, but they allowed me to join them for the first 40 minutes when they were doing drills and stuff. It was so fun, and felt so natural, but also incredibly difficult. After, they were rehearsing some songs, and this looked even harder. I thought the group would be mostly really fit Japanese guys, so I was surprised to see that this demographic was only a small percent of the 20 members. The majority of people there was tiny old Japanese women!!! What?!?! Hopefully, they will allow me to continually practice with them. They are deciding at a meeting on Tuesday. If I join, I will need to take it seriously and go every week. But this should be no problem. 

Today on my bike journey I stopped at a 100yen store (like a dollar store) and bought an 80-pack of origami paper. I found some colored pencils in my desk, and I have begun work on an undefinable year-long art project...

The past few days my friends and host mom have been trying to figure out how to buy concert tickets to see both Radiohead and Sigur Ros at different venues in Osaka. Buying concert tickets in Japan is one of the strangest things I have yet had to experience. It's on par with filling out forms at the ward office. There is a chain of convenience stores called Lawson's, sort of like the Japanese 7/11 (although they also have that here). So, to buy concert tickets, you have to order them over the phone, and then pay for them and pick them up from any Lawson's. But the ordering over the phone is way more complex than it needs to be. Sooner or later, I will have some concert tickets though, which is just another answer to the question, what am I doing in this country?

First Weekend

The Welcome Party on Friday night was mildly ridiculous. I anticipated some nervousness by going to the onsen, or public bath, at the Kyoto Tower Hotel. I remembered going when I was in Japan four years ago, but I had not remembered quite how relaxing of an experience this is. I was really surprised more AKP students didn't take advantage of the free ticket to the onsen we all received, but I was really happy to see this onsen also included a sauna and a cold bath in addition to the hot bath. Afterwards, I went up to the changing rooms to get ready for the party, where the atmosphere resembled the moments right before opening night of a play, or else getting ready for prom. When else do a bunch of guys all put on really fancy clothes together? Hmm.....

Anyway, the Welcome Party was great. We all gathered on the 8th floor of the hotel and slowly our host families started trickling in. My host mom, Fujiko, arrived before my host dad, Takashi. From the minute I met each of them I felt immense relief. They are the cute old couple I imagined them to be. They both speak very good English, and as volunteer Japanese language instructors, they have been correcting me as I stumble my way through this weird, awesome language. Their daughter Yoko arrived a little later with her daughter Amane, a very cute one year old I hope I will be able to spend some time with this year. After all the host families arrived, we all went up to the 9th floor for the part. After some boring speeches in Japanese (thanks Lofgren sensei), we all made a toast to a great year. My host dad was hilarious pouring drinks for me and Kendall. It was really interesting seeing how the other students were interacting with their host families.

Then, we came home to 30-14 Kitayama, Uji. This house is amazing. My host dad gardens, and I still have not yet explored the garden like I know I will want to. There is a greenhouse, but what sort of plants does he grow inside? The downstairs has a large tatami room but it is rarely used. A lot of the doors are traditional Japanese style sliding doors, and in typical Japanese style there is lots of secret hidden storage space all over the place. My room is upstairs, next to my host parents' room. It has a large closet, a (Western-style) bed, a small bookshelf, airconditioning, and a desk. It's a lot more fun to move into a house than a dorm because the desk is already equipped with pens, pencils, colored pencils, highlighters, rulers, etc. I hung up a bunch of pictures on some string and clothespins that were already hanging on the walls. But probably my favorite part of the house is the balcony my bedroom and my parents' bedroom share. Balcony life!!! (Although currently it is way too hot to make good use of that space. I much prefer my AC bubble at this time of year). 

Yesterday all of AKP met at Shimogamo Jinja, a Shinto shrine that predates the founding of the city of Kyoto, for a ritual blessing for a good year. I invested in a shuen, which is a book that you can get stamped and calligraphized in at every shrine and temple in Japan. What a cool souvenir for the year. My host dad accompanied me to Shimogamo, which was good, because while the trains are easy, they are also confusing. Also I really enjoy spending time with my host parents! Just like my friend Iris said: "They are going to think you are so silly. But you are going to think they are silly, so you are just going to have a really great relationship." After Shimogamo, my host dad peaced out and some friends and I went to Kiyomizu dera, my favorite temple from my MA Japan trip. I of course got my shuen stamped at both these sites. My host dad said I must get 100 stamps from the next 8 months. Is 100 going to be too many, or not enough? After Kiyomizu, I also invested in a Nintendo DS. It was a bit more expensive than I wanted it to be, but it is in a sweet shade of "aisu buru" (ice blue). For my first game I got Super Mario 64, a good choice because I have played it and beaten it several times on N64, and that it is all in Japanese does not matter. But I am really excited to get some ridiculous Japanese games that I just won't know how to play at all. 

Today was Sunday and I had an Uji adventure by myself. I took a train and a bus and walked to the Uji River, and went to Uji Jinja. Then I took a bunch of trains back home. Tomorrow is the first day of classes, Japanese review in the morning (placement tests on Thursday and Friday) and Japanese Animation in the afternoon. So I guess today was the last day of summer vacation. 

everything is bon

this past week has been a blur. In no particular order, I have:

-met my homestay family

-got Oriented at Doshisha University

-arrived in Kyoto after a long plane ride

-met many of the 38 other Associated Kyoto Program students

-became friends with a good handful

-had an epic adventure with two Doshisha girls

-dealt extensively with Japanese bureaucracy

-got drunk

-experienced the wonder of the AKP Welcome Party

-arrived at my homestay family's house

-went up the Kyoto Tower for an amazing 360 degree view of this city I will call home for the next 9.5 months

-walked all over Kyoto, twice

-eaten delicious Japanese food

I could go on like this for a while. Long story short, Orientation was very busy, but not a whole lot actually happened. I am currently sitting in my room at my homestay family's house, on my old (but recently crashed, so also sort of new, or rather, better than new) computer, using the wireless internet this house offers. My homestay family lives in Uji, just south of Kyoto. My commute to school will consist of a 10 minute walk to Ogura Eki (station) followed by a 31 minute train ride north through Kyoto to Imadegawa Eki and Doshisha University. No transfers, just a straight shot. How lucky.....

When we arrived in Osaka after a very long/short plane ride, everyone looked so beautiful. We were so happy to be in Japan that our exhaustion, nervousness, and excitement coalesced together into something marvelous and magical. AKP staff greeted us and of course knew all of our names sight unseen. We were all given cute envelopes that contained 150 yen so we could purchase a drink at the local vending machine. Upon boarding the chartered bus that took us to the Kyoto Tower Hotel, Lofgren-sensei (the AKP resident director this year) proclaimed, "Everything is taken care of! Don't panic!" This was the first thing I needed to write down. And how useful to remember, how my arrival in this place was built on so much preparation and work, not just by me, but by so many others I don't even know about. Who built Kyoto? What is the island? Who are the others? 

Life in the Kyoto Tower Hotel was really fun, but so liminal. Wednesday, Thursday, and today, we went to Doshisha for important information sessions, campus tour, cafeteria lunches, et al. Doshisha is beautiful, more like UCLA than like Whitman, although not really like either. After these moments at school, I took off on some walking tours of the city with other AKPers. I am definitely enjoying the crews I have been spending time with--mostly the Wesleyan kids and Kendall, the other Whitman student, and a few others here and there. The group obviously and naturally split into cliques even before we got on the plane, but now that we have broken up geographically (by homestay family) and soon will break up both academically (by our elective classes) and linguistically (by our Japanese classes), the lines between the preformed groups will hopefully blur a little bit. 

Yesterday, I experienced the first of probably many ridiculous adventures I will have this year. Because we are staying in this country for longer than 3 months, we needed to register for Gaikokujindourokushoumeisho, aka Gaijin cards, aka Alien Registration cards. We also needed to apply for Kokuminkenkouhoken, or Japanese national health insurance. Both of these are accomplished at some local office--local in this sense being to our homestay houses. So each AKP student was assigned 2 Doshisha volunteers to assist us in this process. I set out with Natsuki-san and Aki-san, both Policy majors, out to Uji. First we stopped at my homestay house, but no one was home. We took the train two stops further south and then got on a bus that went somewhere totally different in Uji. We walked up a hill and then we were at the Uji ward office. Natsuki and Aki had received extremely specific instructions on the forms they needed to fill out for me and how to to fill them out. 45 minutes, 6 forms, and 4 bureaucrats later, I had successfully applied for those things I needed to apply for. I need to return to the office between the 25th and the 1st to pick up my Gaijin card, and I will receive my health insurance card when AKP receives it in the mail. Then Natsuki, Aki and I returned to Kyoto and went to Starbucks (the same things are different and different things are the same). 

Today, everything built up to the Welcome Party and meeting my host family, but that story will have to wait until tomorrow. It was really funny, like a lot of things I have seen, but I'm not sure if the humour will translate into English (especially written English). Everything I have discussed already does not even cover the bliss I feel having returned to Japan and to Kyoto, or the majesty of the greens of the trees, or the terrible heat and humidity, or the wonder I feel when I find I can read signs and advertisements. I did not even mention my trip to Gion, the geisha district, where I saw at least two Maiko (geisha in training), and walked along a beautiful tree-lined cobblestone bridge. 

1st post

1:18 am, sept. 1, 2008

I'm about to go to Japan

Here I go