another list of things i would write about if i was in the presence of mind to write:

time
trees
old friends
outsiders who want to be on the inside
outsiders who like being on the outside
insiders who don't realize what it means to be in
insiders who want to get out
human beings as a species
the scope of history
enduring through the winter
how birds are dinosaurs
how dogs are wolves
forests
how forests are different in different parts of the world
everything is layers
things that are quintessential
the way small things in the present have big ripples on the future
taking responsibility for your actions
CHOOSE
today is tomorrow's yesterday
reasons why i wake up in the morning
things i used to do
things i do now
things i want to do
when dreams cross and multiply
compromise
on being isolated
on having a community
if there could ever be a community of isolated people?
things that help me see clearly
things that obscure my vision
gentleness

TIME

Is time a clock and a calendar? Or is it something less linear? My time in Japan is bounded on one end by 2008 September 2 and on the other by 2009 June 15. Each day, my activities mostly revolve around the train schedule. I must leave my house by 945 three days a week, or else I will not get to school before class begins. Going home from Kyoto each day is also dependent on which train I catch. Being held back five minutes after a 430 class can sometimes mean 25 minutes added to my commute home, simply because of the patterns of the trains. My host parents have at least 5 calendars in public spaces around the house, and I have two more in my room, because we are always thinking and talking about events on upcoming days. 

One such event was the AKP new year's party, or the "budding talents" party, or as I have been referring to it since mid-November, the "juu-hachi nichi party" (１８日パーティー, literally, party on the 18th). It was yesterday, 2009 January 18 (go figure), and I have been looking forward to it for so long because I played taiko in front of all of AKP and all their host families and a bunch of other people. Six women from my group came and brought drums and we played 3 songs. My host dad videoed it on my camera and I am working on getting them up on youtube, and when I figure that out I will post them here. It was SO fun. Playing taiko is really the best thing I am doing with my time (there's that word again) this year, in this place. 

(thanks to my friend Mia for the photo)

Also I displayed my epic art project, which was very strange. The first part of the day I was too busy stressing about how to display it to be stressed about taiko. But the women from Uzu came pretty much one minute after I got it all hung up, so I immediately had to start preparing for taiko stuff. The art project (called "Cosmos") was really well received, which I didn't really expect. 

Side note: my elective classes this semester. They have only met twice each but already I think they are going to be WAY better than last semester. I am taking Japanese Religion and Japanese Ecology. The Religion prof is from Canada and has been living in Japan for 12 years. She is as weird as you can imagine, but seems really knowledgeable about Shinto and Buddhism, and the New Religions. And we are going on some cool field trips. My ecology prof is a REAL biology professor, not an "asian studies scholar," and has done a ton of research on Japanese ecology before. His specialty is ornithology, and he has gotten everyone in the class so excited to learn about the three dozen or so bird species that live in the Kyoto area in the winter and spring. We already went on a field trip, to a marsh in the north of the city, and looked at some duck species and some not duck species that are living there right now. 

Birds--birds are dinosaurs. Think about it. And the next bird you see, really look at it, and see how it walks, how it moves, how it flies. 

back to the life

The end of winter break passed without much going on. Hannah and I went to Nara one day and we walked around and went to the big Buddha and went to a beautiful shrine (all the things there are to do in Nara). Another day I was sick and didn't do anything. Over the course of 5 or so days I read the entirety of White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Which reminds me, some folks have been asking me about what I have been reading, so here are the books I have read since coming to Japan: 

The Elephant Vanishes (short stories) by Murakami Haruki

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander and a bunch of other architects

The Silent Cry by Oe Kenzaburo

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson

Life is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera

The Old Capital by Kawabata Yasunari

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

One of my new year's resolutions is to keep reading, a lot. I bought The Dragons of Blueland, the third in the My Father's Dragon series, in Japanese, except in Japanese it is called Elmer and the 16 Dragons. I started reading that but it is pretty slow going. 

Another New Year's resolution is to bike a lot more. I bought a bike, which should help. It is only an hour and a half from my house to school, so especially when the weather starts to get better, I will definitely be biking all over the Kyoto outskirts. 

I have only had Japanese class the past 2 days of class, but I am pretty excited for it. My teacher this semester, Kuwahira-sensei, I thought would be cool and aloof, but I was wrong. She is totally off the wall bonkers! So far she has gotten very excited about: having us conjugate verbs into the passive form, my presentation on being hung over during my new years shrine visits with my host family, and a vocab quiz we have next week. Her handwriting is a little sloppy but only because she is writing so quickly, because she is so excited about writing stuff on the board. 

I also bought bachi (taiko drumsticks) of my own so I can actually practice taiko at home. I think I am also going to buy a drum. 

Yesterday I went with Hannah and Richard to see K-20, a Japanese movie that had an amazing poster. The poster was so wild, even, that we based the decision to see the movie entirely on the strength of the poster. Bad idea. We really didn't understand very much of the movie, not because we didn't understand the dialogue, but because the movie just didn't make very much sense. 

Happy New Year!!!

明けましておめでとうございます！

Winter break has been going really well. My mom came to visit, and I thoroughly enjoyed showing her lots of cool places in Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Kyoto. Some of my favorite moments:

-Shibuya crossing 

-Tokyo Tower on its 50th anniversary

-Sushi at the Tsukiji fish market

-the day spent with my host parents

-hiking Fushimi Inari in very cold weather, and discovering snow halfway up the mountain

-turning 21 at Itsukushima Shrine, and a ridiculous Japanese dinner at a Japanese style inn

-realizing that I am actually very adept at Japanese

I had been most of the places we went already, but it was really fun seeing my mom see them for the first (only?) time. We had lots of great conversations about all sorts of things, especially how strange Japan is, what it means to have a hobby, what it means to be skillful at something, how different people travel different paths, being a tourist vs. being a resident, the nature of cities, the bomb... It occurred to me today how strange it is that I have been to Hiroshima, the peace park and peace museum, three times, but I have been to Washington DC only once. 

She left on New Year's Eve day, and I came home and unpacked and relaxed for a bit before going out for the night. New Year's Eve is a different holiday in Japan than it is in America--the important part of the holiday is January 1-3, when you relax at home with your family and eat a very traditional meal (it's the same meal for breakfast and dinner for all three days). So I spent New Year's Eve with Seanacey, my tea ceremony friend, and Kojiro. Kojiro's friend Mamu (an accomplished Japanese fashion designer) moved from Tokyo down the street from Kojiro and Seanacey a few weeks ago, and for New Year's about 10 more of their friends from Tokyo came. Also with us were Joann and Zac, two Whitman seniors last year that I had one class each with and never expected to see or talk to again. So it was a strange but wonderful and very fun group. For reasons I can't explain, I started the night with like 45 minutes alone with the Tokyo friends only, which was a lot of fun. We started drinking and ate some snacks and watched Japanese wrestling (not sumo, like legit wrestling) on TV. Then Kojiro, Mamu, Seanacey, Zac and Joann arrived, we hung out for a while longer, and then went to dinner. We got pretty drunk at dinner and then walked to Yasaka Shrine in the middle of Kyoto's downtown. We were there with thousands of people when midnight rolled around, and it was so cold but we were having a great time taking silly pictures and waiting to enter the shrine. At about 1205 I saw about 10 of my AKP peers who were tired of waiting, and about 1210 we got tired of waiting, and left. I wanted to hang out with those folks some more, but I came home and passed out...

...because I had to wake up at 545 to do a real hatsumode--the first shrine visit of the year, on New Year's Day--with my host parents. We left the house at 615 and went to three shrines. The first one, Iwashimizu Hachimanguu, was on the top of a mountain and we had to ride a cable car to get there. We received a Shinto blessing by a woman dancing around with some bells. For musical accompaniment, there was also a woman with a huge drum, a guy playing a flute, and a woman with small cymbals. The second shrine was called Jounangu. They gave us a little bit of sake and a keychain with a girl sitting inside a soup bowl. Finally we came home and then went to Iseda Jinja, which is a shrine only 5 minutes walk from my house, that I never knew existed because it is hidden inside a tiny alley that I never noticed before. They gave me a sweet soup called oshiruko and a LOT of sake and by the time we left I was drunk. And it was only 830am! We came home and had traditional Japanese New Year's breakfast (including, among other things, white miso soup with mochi, lotus root, egg, sweet black beans, some vegetables, fish, and many inedible-seeming other foods) and then I passed out. 

Today was the first day of Japanese department stores' Bargain week. I went to Uniqlo, sort of the Japanese Gap, and got lots of great stuff for a huge bargain. It was a great deal and it was so funny to see how many Japanese people will turn out for a huge annual sale. I will probably go back to Uniqlo before the week is out.

I hope everyone reading this had a lovely New Year/Christmas/Hanukah holiday season and is enjoying the first moments of 2009!