beneath arranged leaves

whatever happened, happened

2009-06-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

and this is what happened:

-I left my homestay
-I went to Hokkaido
-I worked on an organic farm
-I went to Sapporo
-I traveled in Thailand and Cambodia with my brother
-I went to Tokyo
-I returned to Kyoto, my present location

When I was in SEAsia I really missed Japan, a lot. Inexplicably. I have been really enjoying my time in Tokyo and Kyoto, and I cannot even begin to think about what it will be like to go back to the bay on Monday.

Taiwan: touch your heart

2009-05-07T06:27:00.000-07:00

Taiwan was excellent. Taiwan was utterly random and marvelous and hot and goofy and languages, and delicious. Taiwan is all about not being part of mainland China. Taiwan is also all about bubble tea, moto scooters, and night markets. Taiwan is also all about superb fresh fruit, some of the friendliest and most generous East Asians I have ever met, and not really speaking English at all. Hannah and I arrived in Taipei on Sunday the 26th and departed on Thursday the 7th. In between then:

Taipei was two great Mexicans, 5 night markets, being surprised at everything, Taipei 101 - the (second) tallest building in the world - being able to read but not speak, new piercings, a visit to the city of Jiufen, and welcoming Jason B. to the country.

The view from the top of the mountain next to Jiufen

Tainan was two great Frenchies, a Peruvian, a super goofy Taiwanese girl, all put in a blender creating a multi-lingual dinner in English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin, and probably some Taiwanese. Tainan was also hookah smoking, the happiest and most generous man in all of Taiwan, the second most delicious pineapple I have ever eaten (arguably the first, actually), lots of cool old temples, amazing dumplings and noodles.

Then - Kaosiung and Kenting - saying goodbye to Jason, a silly but delicious lunch, the experience of being in Cancun in East Asia but also in Southeast Asia, a Catholic hostel, lots of hilarious Taiwanese schoolchildren, the beach, getting sunburned, reading, swimming, saying hello to Jason and his parents, a delicious meal of Chinese food, and "sleeping" on the beach.

When we woke up on the beach Hannah and I saw our first of three sunrises in four days. Leaving Kenting involved a nap in a hotel lobby, the most terrible of terrible bus rides, deciding to go to Alishan National Forest, a train ride, and getting hassled by some taxi drivers.

Going to and being in Alishan involved an amazing Taiwanese couple that spoke great English, a really beautiful bus ride, looking for the hotel, finding the hotel, delicious vegetables, an amazing Taiwanese man giving us tea, going to bed early, waking up at 3am, a train ride up the mountain to view the sunrise over Yushan (the tallest mountain in East Asia) (and our second sunrise our of three in four days), and a beautiful hike through the forest back to the town. The sunrise was for sure a highlight of the trip.

From there we returned to Taipei, but not before hanging out for a few hours in Taichung, the most boring city in Taiwan, drinking bubble tea and seeing a huge Buddha. Our return to Taipei was met by the Mexicans again, followed by a well-deserved night's sleep, sleeping in, meeting up with Jason K. and his friend Eli, a silly lunch, more bubble tea, the most amazing museum in the world filled with all of China's treasures, probably the best dumplings of my life, another delicious meal with Jason B. and his parents (this time in Shanghai), wandering around the river, things coming full circle, attempting to stay up all night and almost succeeding, problematically going to the airport and getting to the gate (damn swine flu), and returning to Japan.

When we got back to the country we decided to keep the travel going and went to Kobe on our way back to Kyoto. This trip was one of my favorite travel experiences maybe ever. There were some bad points but nearly every day had only great points. Now I have little more than 2 days to completely pack my life in Japan and move to my friend's house before going to the farm. This will probably be my last entry until after my adventures for the next month - working on an organic farm in Hokkaido, hanging out with my brother in 3 SE Asian nations, and three days alone in Tokyo.

Also - if you are reading this and know anything at all about Taiwan's economy, please comment! I wondered a lot about it the whole time I was there.

the end has no end

2009-04-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

This week was the last week of AKP. It was also the longest week of the year. My dreams all week long were at least a week in length, but usually one or two months. So much happened day to day, but it was all taking place in my mind. This wasn't helped by me getting sick on Thursday (the very last day) so I slept all day, but it felt more like sleeping for a decade.

Last night was the Farewell Party. It was the first time I had been to the Kyoto Tower Hotel since orientation, and more specificially, the Welcome Party. It was a very strange experience, and simultaneously not as sad as I thought it would be and also considerably sadder than I thought it would be. I had my last taiko practice on Wednesday, which was truly sad, but I played taiko with 8 of my group members at the party, which was pretty great. After the party at least half of AKP went to Kyoto station and sat on the steps and got really drunk. The best part was when we all gave mini speeches to each other. Mine went something like,

"this is where we started and this is where we ended; we've been gone a long time but have been here for a short time; the weather is significantly more pleasant now than it was when we got here."

Saying goodbye at the end of the station part of the night was the saddest part, because so many things need to happen before I see most of those people again. SO many things.

Tomorrow I head out to Taiwan. Hannah and I are going together and will have our own adventures before meeting up with Jason B. and his parents, and Jason K. and his brother and his friend. The AKP journey ended yesterday, today it is raining, and tomorrow is something entirely different.

Run Into Flowers

2009-04-13T05:49:00.001-07:00

Spring has finally arrived! The season I have been waiting for all along, and now it is nearly over. I have been doing lots of "hanami", literally "flower viewing." This is a huge tradition in Japan during the cherry blossom season - to go and look at the flowers. Usually people bring a picnic and make a whole day out of it, which I have done a few times, but usually we just bring some drinks and a frisbee and we're good to go. There is a saying: "hana yori sake" which translates to be, "flowers are not as important as sake."

FLOWERS:

This is the last week of class. Finally. But also a little sad. The cherry blossoms have already passed their peak, and now there is "sakura yuki" or cherry blossom petal snow everywhere. Ah! the fleetingness of the seasons!

some themes from the year so far

2009-03-30T06:20:00.001-07:00

i would say more about these if I was in the presence of mind to write anything beyond the list...but writing the list is itself important

portals vs. monsters
TIME
-past, present, future
-the clock and the calendar
-series of events in a causal chain
-moments and memories
PLACE
-the scope of a city
-riding a bike vs. taking the train
-how scenery changes
time+place
-weather
-seasons
-trees
-photographs
The Island
-sitting on rocks and under trees
-mountains emerging from water
-continents are islands, too
Having hobbies and being skillful
Many Lives
tangling and untangling
Bumbling
Bodies
-faces
-hands
-feet
-eyes
-ears
-mouths
-stomachs
-Open up your throat!

Everything Is
-crazy
-the same
-different
-layers
-patterns
-rhythms
-flowers
-the ocean

South Korea's got Seoul, South Korea likes to rock n roll

2009-03-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a lovely little jaunt to South Korea. Korea Sparkling! I went to Seoul and stayed with my cousin Michael, who has been teaching English there for about three years. I didn't do too much sightseeing, mostly I wandered all around Seoul and ate incredibly delicious and cheap things. The best (and wildest, perhaps) was live octopus.

(just watch it squirm for a little bit)

We also ate raw beef, a few different kinds of Korean bbq, a delicious fried meat thing in a huge rectangle, lots and lots of kimchi, and a ton of really good street food. The best street food came in a tent with lots of old Korean people (who started a fight with each other).

Michael and me and a crazy Korean man. I'll let you figure out who is who.

Aside from eating, I was mostly just in shock the whole time at how Korea is totally not Japan. Compared to Japan, Koreans are real people! They are not robots or ants like Kyoto residents, they look around on the subway and talk on their cell phones on the bus and are loud and gregarious and SO friendly. Also I was in a pretty big shock at the sprawl and magnitude of the city of Seoul.

The north-west expanse of the city from the top of the 63 Building

Seoul is really the city from Blade Runner, the city of the future

One friend asked me, what will I expect from Japan after being in Korea? I realized a few important things. One is, my thoughts are almost completely in Japanese, which I hadn't really realized until being in a place where both the language's sounds and written alphabet are utterly unlike either of the two languages I can speak. Yeah, languages are SO crazy. I also realized, it is really nice to be with your family. I also realized, for the next month, I need to enjoy Japan as much as possible. Spring has pretty much arrived, and springtime is the season! The good things don't last, and there is no use complaining when I have it so easy.

spring field trip

2009-03-09T05:57:00.000-07:00

Well, the spring field trip turned out to be more fun than I thought it would. I knew the things we would be doing would be fun, such as:
-a castle
-a cool old shrine
-a great forest
-the Ocean
-some onsen
-a river boat ride
-an amazing waterfall
-a cooler but more anticlimactic old shrine
-some rocks

But the missing thread was the bus. My friends and I (Jason, Jason, Richard, Hannah, Kendall, and Ben) discovered that the back of the bus we were on could turn from normal back of the bus into a really sweet limousine-like circle. So there were 6 of us (Kendall would come and go) in a circle of 12 seats. We had tons of room, we spread out, we allowed each other naps and music listening time, but it was mostly a lot of good conversation and a lot of alcohol. We wanted curtains to really make it a room, even though we referred to it as a room. We spent an obscene amount of time on the bus throughout the three days, so being in such a comfortable arrangement was highly satisfying.

Here are some photos.

it's the same ocean....

I built a rock pile.

These rocks are married.

The next big adventure: Korea.

2009-03-02T05:24:00.000-08:00

recently I was asking, What does the rest of February have in store? And the 28th turned out to be one of my favorite days of the month. The weather was sunny and beautiful after a week of rain and depression. I biked to Kyoto, met my friend Danielle for lunch, ate delicious thai food, met our friend Machiko, went to the river, took off my shoes and socks, sat in the sun for a bit, met our friend Jason, formed a bike gang, went to Daimonji, climbed the mountain, talked about meaningful and meaningless things, looked at the view, got our shoes muddy, came down the mountain. Then the dynamic totally shifted.

I rode my bike to the middle of the city and met my friend Allie, a great friend from high school who is studying abroad about 30 minutes away from Kyoto. She and I met up with Seanacey, Kojiro, and Mamu, my friends from tea ceremony. The 5 of us went to a concert at a curry udon restaurant. The restuarant is owned by a guy who goes by Master and the concert was 3 Australians playing "experimental music" that I had met the week before with Seanacey and Kojiro. This story is really tangled and I don't really want to get into it right now. But the show was amazing. Before the Australians played, two Japanese guys played. The second one also played "experimental music" but the first one was ridiculous. he was playing a Swiss instrument called a hang. It is sort of like a cross between a steel drum and a tabla, but sounds like water. Watching this guy play his hang was one of the most beautiful things I had seen in a while. After the show, we chatted with the musicians and with Master for a while, and then I biked home.

Yesterday, Sunday March 1 was a high school day. Today was Monday, tomorrow is Tuesday, Wednesday is Taiko, and Thursday is the start of the three day all AKP spring field trip. We are going to Wakayma and to Ise. I am pretty excited to do everything we are doing, and I am excited to observe all AKP interacting together, but I am not excited to participate with all AKP interacting together.

some interesting and important observations

2009-02-21T06:45:00.000-08:00

-Japanese people think Japanese is a really hard language
-life is considerably better when it is not raining
-life is considerably better when you are in the bay area
-old japanese people blame white people for the bomb (no matter what)
-one of the main reasons why living in my host family's house is difficult is because of the physical arrangement of communal space
-the world is so pretty and so full of possibilities
-sometimes you find friends in unexpected corners
-property laws are incredibly important, but also incredibly stupid
-opposable thumbs are what make us human
-sometimes your horoscope is completely accurate
-sometimes all you need is to listen to Bob Dylan

February is already halfway over

2009-02-14T04:59:00.001-08:00

February Break was a really nice trip. Kendall and I traveled really well together, and it was really great to be away from Kyoto for a little bit. Some highlights:
-SNOWBOARDING. It had been since March 2006, but it only took about 3 minutes for me to remember completely how to snowboard. The snow conditions were perfect for both days, the views of the Japanese Alps were amazing, snowboarding in Japan is way cheaper than anywhere else in the world (perhaps the only thing that is cheaper here), I had the easiest snowboard rental experience ever, and since we were at the mountain on a Monday and Tuesday, we were more or less the only people there (aside from people at ski schools and people training for races).
-36 hours in Tokyo. What a weird and wild city. We went to a Kampo (chinese medicine) seminar, and when Kendall and her friend Masako went to a seminar on Chinese fortune-telling, I explored a street filled with cool old bookstores.
-Staying with Masako--Masako did a homestay with Kendall's family when Kendall was 4 and 5, and I fell apart when she pulled out early 90s photos of little kid Kendall.
-Staying with Kendall's old host family--I can't really describe the Tadama family. They were really great and showed us a wonderful time in Ueda. But they also gave me a lot of perspective on my own family experience.
-When I returned to Kyoto I still had one more day before I had to go back to school. I went on a bike ride to this crazy park/forest near my house and I brought my drum, and for a while I sat in this lookout tower in the middle of some woods near a playground and played drum.

I just got back from a really fun excursion to Osaka. I can't believe I have been in Kansai for five and a half months and am only now discovering that Osaka is actually the best city in Japan. It is so close and it is so cheap to get there and the people are so fun and nice and hip and the food is really delicious and the colors POP. I actually knew this in early October when I went to Osaka for the Radiohead show but did not internalize this, and therefore did not actually learn it. I am remembering other times I have learned something but did not internalize it and therefore did not learn it:
-flossing after Vision Quest
-getting up when you wake up after Alaska
-knife after Alaska
-etc.
I think I need to make more of an effort at remembering the things I learn, and learning the things I remember.

february 5

2009-02-05T02:47:00.000-08:00

I have Monday-Wednesday next week off, and thus tomorrow begins the long-awaited February Break. Originally I had wanted to go to the Snow Festival in Hokkaido (northern Japan), featuring giant sculptures made out of snow. But fall break taught me to be careful about traveling, and going to Kobe for the Luminaria taught me just how much Japanese people love both being a tourist, and seasonal activities. So I put the snow festival plan to rest.

Kendall and I wanted to do something together, and the plan that emerged is basically me accompanying her on her research trip. We are first going to Tokyo, where we will go to some seminars on kampo, a traditional medicine practice that originated in China (like a lot of things about Japan). Then we will head to Ueda in Nagano, where we will stay with her old host family from when she came to Japan two years ago. We will go snowboarding on Monday and Tuesday, and then I am returning to Kyoto on the night bus Tuesday night.

Not much else to say. The winter is a test of endurance. But spring is approaching sooner than I think.

2009-01-30T02:49:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-18T21:27:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-10T05:13:00.000-08:00

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!!!

2009-01-02T00:28:00.000-08:00

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!

to-do

2008-12-13T20:23:00.000-08:00

The things I do with Kendall are the stories that I like telling the most. On Friday night, she and I spontaneously decided to climb Daimonji. This is a mountain to the east of Kyoto with a huge 'dai' character 大 built into the hill face. Every year in the summer, there is a huge festival where they burn lamps within the character, lighting it up/on fire. The hike was short and easy, and the moon was full and huge and bright. We sat in the middle of the character, at the point where all the lines intersect, and we watched the glow of the city lights beneath us. I wrote this poem:

Daimonji at night

The full moon shines bright above

The city below

We brought some snacks and some sake, and when we went back to the city we went to a cafe that had surprisingly great falafel.

This was probably the best way possible to celebrate the end of classes for the semester. They were something of a joke, and finishing my final projects and stuff was time consuming but I actually produced work I am (somewhat) proud of. This week I have finals for my Japanese class but I am not too worried about those either.

I have been thinking a lot about many things, none of which I am in the presence of mind to write about here. But here is a list of things I would want to write something about:

old/new

trees

time and place

when and where?

old people who want to be young

young people who want to be old

how little kids don't know anything

how little kids know way more than anybody

late autumn, just before early winter

early winter, just after late autumn

Sakyamuni Buddha

one life/many lives

the very hungry caterpillar

being a tourist

being a permanent resident

permanence?

the body as a portal

brains

beards

seasonal activities

things that happen once, ever

eyes

ears

how trees have eyes and ears

colors

inside/outside

absolute energy

amoebas

cities

amoebas that build cities

bicycles

memory as dream

the ocean

mountains

the desert

feeling good

2008-12-01T04:49:00.000-08:00

When I woke up on Friday I was greeted by many members of my extended family, all gathered at my house for Thanksgiving. It was strange to not be there, my first Thanksgiving not at home, yet I was glad for the opportunity to see and talk to many family members that I have not heard from in a while.

Then, I met Kendall at Doshisha for lunch and we saw some of the Doshisha Eve celebration. None of the Japanese students had class last week either, because all week long they were celebrating the founding of their university. Doshisha was a completely different campus than the one I go to every day. Every single club from both the Imadegawa and Kyotanabe campuses wanted me to buy the food they were cooking, but all Kendall and I wanted to do was watch some of the thousands of dance clubs perform on the enormous stage erected in the middle of campus. It felt like we were somewhere in America as hundreds of dancers performed pretty standard hip-hop and modern dance routines to American songs. If we were in Berkeley or Seattle there would even be the same percentage of Asians... (yet not all of them would be Japanese).

This was followed by a great bike ride. I borrowed Kendall's host mom's bike and off we went to Ohara, a farming town northeast of Kyoto. We wanted to go to a famous temple there but it was overrun by tourists there to see the fall colors. Instead, we went on a small hike along the mountain path next to the temple. We still got to see amazingly beautiful fall colors (it turns out I take a lot of pictures of trees in this country) and it was far less touristy. We reached a waterfall and it seemed like a good place to have a Japanese tourist take our picture and then return on bike to Kyoto. Despite a little bit of rain on the ways there and back it was a beautiful day. I looked in my guidebook when I got home and it turns out the waterfall is famous, and called the Soundless Waterfall 音無しの滝. Saicho (who founded the temple we wanted to go to) meditated or something by the waterfall.

Saturday I had my first taiko performance! What a funny event. It was in the train station at Okubo, two stops south of mine. Before my group performed, a local children's taiko group performed, and I am probably only slightly better than most of the kids in that group. One girl was super skillful at rhythms! Then Uzu, my group, played. I played on two out of five songs they performed, which was definitely an appropriate ratio. I only know four songs, but the children's group played the other two songs that I know. Setting up the drums probably the funniest part. It was super guerilla-style: two unmarked white vans pulled up next to the station, the 12 or so group members who were at this performance quickly unloaded all the equipment, and then the vans sped away. The same thing but in reverse occurred for the striking of the drums.

Saturday night I went with my host mom and a bunch of her friends to a delicious Brazilian restaurant in downtown Kyoto. The food was great and there was a live bossa nova band. November 29 is 'delicious meat' day in Japan, because of a Japanese pun that I can't explain. This is a tradition I am very excited to bring back to the states.

I have been getting some questions about my classes. Basically, they are pretty bad, one of the weakest points of the program and one of the main reasons why I will not recommend this program to future generations of Whitman Asian Studies majors. Yet I am very glad for my final projects--I finally have work to do! And since I chose the topics for my final projects I am very excited to complete them and to have something to show for my time this semester. My final project in Japanese class is an essay on why Walla Walla is my favorite place. I have a presentation for anime class on the film Paprika, and I am analyzing the relationship in that movie between dreams and movies. My final projects for Gardens and anime class are on the same theme: emptiness. I am looking at the rock garden of Ryoanji and the use of silence and silent moments in the films Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Akira. The next two weeks before finals are going to be very busy but I am feeling focused and refreshed.

fall broken

2008-11-27T02:56:00.001-08:00

So my fall break trip to Kyuushuu was a mild disaster. It was fun, parts of it, but other parts were by turns stressful, uncomfortable, awkward.... I was led to believe that it was well planned and organized. Had I known beforehand that the trip leaders had in fact no idea what they were doing, I would not have gone. Anyway, I went, and saw some cool things, and spent entirely too much money, bonded a lot with Lindsay, and felt incredibly homesick. One question that came up was, what was I homesick for? Kyoto? Bay area? Walla Walla? Not Los Angeles, but I thought a lot about people in Los Angeles (as I always do). And on this note, in homage to The Flying Squirrel and to plagiarize my brother, here are the top 10 moments of my Kyuushuu trip.

10. Spectacles Bridge, Sunday afternoon

Japan has some weird tourist sites. This is the oldest arched bridge in Japan, or something like that. It's in Nagasaki. I thought it was just a regular bridge, but I guess saying something is special makes it special, even if it's ordinary.

9. Site of the Martyrdom of the 26 Saints of Japan

6 Christian Missionaries and 20 Japanese Christians were killed on this spot in Nagasaki. On Saturday night, we walked there after just arriving in Nagasaki. It was a really nice night out, and the hill had a pretty view of the harbor.

8. Urakami Cathedral

Just after going to the Nagasaki Peace Park, we went to the Urakami Cathedral. It was the oldest church in Japan until it was destroyed in the a-bomb. I sat alone inside for a little bit and thought about the old churches I visited in Europe, the bomb, and religion. The church had really pretty stained glass windows.

7. Nagasaki Peace Park, Sunday morning

The one in Hiroshima was definitely more powerful, but this one was really interesting. It had a lot of statues symbolizing peace. This is the big, famous one; the right arm points to the threat of nuclear weapons and the left arm signifies a peaceful future (?). Fun fact: my host mom's best friend's uncle designed it!

6. Karaoke in Kagoshima, Monday and Tuesday nights

By the time we got to Kagoshima, after being in Fukuoka and then Nagasaki, we were fed up and exhausted. Lindsay's all-purpose solution: Karaoke! This was actually only the second (and third) times I have been to karaoke in Japan, and as a result of this trip I am going to start going more, it's definitely a great way to spend some time and relieve some stress.

5. Dinosaur Park

On Tuesday, we took a ferry from Kagoshima across the bay to Sakurajima. This was our first stop. Why there are giant dinosaurs is beyond me. But it was some more grass we got to lie on.

4. Arriving at the hotel in Kagoshima

We arrived in Kagoshima around 2 on Monday but didn't leave the station until 345 or so. This was the moment when our trip really fell apart. Earlier that morning I had decided I wanted to come home early, and dealing with ticket stuff and planning for the remainder of the week was really stressful and annoying. Lindsay and I could only laugh when we saw our tiny hotel room.

3. Furusato Onsen

The main reason we went to Sakurajima was to go to this onsen (bath house). It was absolutely beautiful, probably the most amazing onsen I will ever go to. There is this giant, old, crazy tree next to a shrine. Sitting in the hot water underneath the tree's roots was like being in a mermaid's grotto. The bath is pretty much on the ocean, so it looks like the water in the bath extends out into the ocean. When I got too hot, I cooled off in the cold ocean water before getting back into the hot water. We timed our arrival really well with sunset, and the view was so breathtaking.

2. Sangen'en, Tuesday morning

This was a famous villa back in the day, with an amazing garden. When I entered the garden I realized that this was why I had gone all the way to Kyuushuu. Back in the day, poets would sit along the banks of the stream. Cups of sake on boards of wood would float down the stream towards them, and they would have to write a poem before the sake reached them. Upon finishing the poem they would drink the sake.

1. Returning to Kyoto

There's no place like home. As a result of this trip, I am sort of disillusioned by travel. Fukuoka, Nagasaki, and Kagoshima were all nice cities, but more and more I understand that cities are more or less all sort of the same, and not necessarily worth traveling to. I am glad that the next trip I take will be with my mom (there's that homesick thing again).

* * *

In other news, today is Thursday, making it Thanksgiving. I spent all day today decompressing from my trip. I cooked my own breakfast, read, watched some movies, colored, took a little nap... I am very thankful for being able to be in Japan, I am very thankful for my host parents, I am very thankful that there are people far away in other parts of the world who are maybe reading these words and thinking about me, and I am thankful that I am able to think about them.

blah

2008-11-20T06:23:00.001-08:00

So I suddenly became really busy the last two weeks. I had two tea ceremony classes and two Taiko practices, and last weekend I had events all three nights of the weekend, which I really didn't like. Friday was the AKP Thanksgiving party, which was way more fun than I thought it was going to be. It was great seeing everyone's host families and afterwards a couple friends and I wanted to see a movie but ended up at the river instead. Saturday Richard and I finally hiked Atago-san and Saturday night I went to my host mom's friends' going away party. Sunday I was too hung over to do anything and then went to a dinner party with my host dad and his golf friends. Which was actually sort of funny, the food was great, but it was three hours long and all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole.

And tomorrow I am going to Kyuushuu (a different island) for fall break with Becca, Eric, and Lindsay. I am really excited. I really need a break from my host family and from classes. I am most excited to go to Nagasaki and to Yakushima. Nagasaki, to see how their portrayal of the a-bomb is both different and similar to Hiroshima; Yakushima, because it is probably more rural than Walla Walla (!) (it is a smaller island off of the small island of Kyuushuu, which is a small island off of Honshu, the main island of Japan, which is just a series of islands).

When it is Thanksgiving in California I will be in the Kumamoto/Aso-san area of Kyuushuu, so I wish anyone reading this a lovely and filling meal!

authentic Japan?

2008-11-10T20:56:00.000-08:00

On Saturday morning, I went to an international event at South Uji Junior High School. My host mom asked me weeks ago if I would give a speech and presentation, and of course I said yes, but did not work on it at all until maybe two weeks beforehand. My speech was about the bay area and California, middle school life in America, and what middle school students do on summer and winter breaks. I had an accompanying powerpoint as well. The presentation had to be 20 minutes, to be performed three times to three different groups of 5 or 6 students. My speech ended up being only about 15 minutes but that left 5 minutes for questions, which turned out to be a really good idea.

So on Saturday morning, I went with my host parents to the school, where I and the 17 other international presenters met and prepared. The whole process was really funny and interesting. Just before 10, I went into my assigned classroom with 2 other presenters, and did my presentation. The first group was pretty interested, but one girl was sort of disruptive. The second group was really interested. The third group wasn't interested at all, but listened very quietly. All three groups asked me what sports I liked. Only the last group asked me about my piercings and my curly hair.

On Sunday, I went with my host dad to the Uji Stamp Rally. This event is sort of hard to explain, but was probably one of the most fun things I have done in the past 2 months. Basically, we spent four and a half hours walking 14km around Uji, going to all the cultural/historical/famous spots. There is a short course that only takes an hour and a half, but we did the long course. The short course has 10 points, and the long course has 22. At each point, we received a stamp on this giant piece of paper that also had a map of the courses.

I feel like that wasn't a very good description of the event, but thats pretty much exactly what it was. Uji does the Stamp Rally for three weekends every autumn, and while we were walking I couldn't help thinking that it was probably the most "authentically Japanese" thing I will do this year. I saw maybe three other foreigners all day, because this event is pretty specifically for the local people in Uji. I saw lots of parents and young children, I saw lots of people running the course, I saw many many middle aged friends and couples walking it together. Because it's really just walking around town with your friends or family, but also walking with thousands of other people at the same time. My host dad and I had some really good conversations while we were walking, and now I know where all the great hiking trails in Uji are.

New things

2008-11-07T03:57:00.000-08:00

1. New regime

-this one seems self-explanatory at this point. Hooray!

2. New train

-the bay to LA in 2 or 3 hours?!? Can't wait

3. new bike

-on Wednesday morning, just as I was feeling tense and nervous and excited about watching the election results come in online, my host mom told me her English teacher was giving her a mountain bike. Because his girlfriend moved to Australia. So now I have a SWEET new mountain bike.

4. new music

-at Tea Ceremony class on Tuesday, Kojiro gave Kendall and me 3 cds of music. But really it was 3 dvds of music, in total almost 9 gigs of mostly japanese techno. So far the best thing is the katamari damacy soundtrack.....

5. New camera

-sometime in mid-september, we were at karaoke (still the only time I have been to karaoke...) and I accidentally dropped my camera. It's worked sort of okay since then, sort of. the lens would freak out all the time, which prevented me from being able to take pictures, and most of the time when the lens wouldn't freak out, it let light in in a funny way. So finally I said screw it and today got a really nice Canon camera that can do all sorts of nifty things.

6. new regime

-this one can't be understated

GOBAMA

2008-11-04T04:47:00.001-08:00

The past few weeks I have felt SO FAR AWAY from the election (probably because, well, I am). I watched Tina Fey being Sarah Palin on youtube. I watched some of the debates online. But there are so many elements lacking, notably in advertising. It wasn't until I was skyping with my mom when she told me that Obama had a 30 minute infomertial on 3 major networks?!?!?! and that the pro-Prop 8 fanatics have been running really terrible ads?!?!? And I thought, wow, yeah, I really have no idea what has been going on in the US, I have been so removed from all the election fever that has been brewing.....

So now as I write this, it is 950pm on the night of Tuesday the 4th, but it's only 5am in CA. Very strange...election day is almost over but the polls haven't even opened.

Even though I am so far away both in time and space from US politics right now, I am still proud that I was able to cast my [absentee] vote for Obama in my first-ever presidential election. I can't help thinking that this election literally affects everyone in the entire world. Hypothetically...how much better will our world be if Obama is our president until 2016?

halloweekend

2008-11-02T04:13:00.000-08:00

Even though it technically is a 'long weekend,' tomorrow is a national holiday, AKP still has classes tomorrow. So it was really just a long weekend, lots of busy activities.

Friday night I went to a Halloween party, because it was Halloween, go figure. Jason K. rented out an entire bar overlooking the river, with free food and drinks for 2+ hours. Very fun. Good people, good view, good dancing, good costumes (I went as Tengu, a famous demon in Japanese folklore. Small history lesson: Tengu appeared to Minamoto no Yoshitsune at the end of the Heian period at Yoshitsune's hiding place on Kurama and taught him how to use swords, enabling Yoshitsune to defeat the Taira clan and usher in the Kamakura period). After the party, Jason B. spent the night at my house, making me realize that something I really miss about life in the US is slumber parties.

Saturday, I went with Jason and my host parents on an optional AKP field trip to the Miho Museum and a pottery studio in Shigaraki. It was a pretty good day. It was fun seeing people's host families now that I am familiar with the identities of my AKP peers. The Miho Museum was absolutely beautiful. The special exhibit was called "Japan is Beautiful" or something like that, and focused on the writings and artwork associated with Kawabata Yasunari (the first Japanese person to ever win a Nobel prize) and Yasuda Yukihiko. But the theme of the museum is 'beauty' --the way I understand it, the museum was founded by a New Religious Sect that prizes beauty above all else, artwork being the means by which humans reflect what we see in nature. For example: "It is important for us to reflect and carefully observe the work of our predecessors. By looking at them extensively and observing them deeply, one gradually cultivates a true appreciation of the good, and whit is truly good becomes apparent. A lofty mountain is not beautiful when gazing at its foot. It is something like that when we raise our eyes higher, and the height of the mountains become higher and the lower peaks become lower. That reveals the true beauty of high peaks." --Yasuda Yukihiko

The pottery studio was funny. It was filled with raccoon statues, some enormous, most creepy, because to place a raccoon (tanuki) statue at your front door is good luck. I made a bowl just the right size to either drink tea out of, or eat donburi out of.

Then Sunday, I went with the History of Kyoto class on their field trip up Mt. Hiei. The hike was really great, I loved the moment when I was high enough on the mountain that the kinds of trees changed and suddenly I was in a forest of Japanese cedars. At the top of the mountain was the "Hiei Garden Museum," which was really pretty but really stupid. The top of Mt. Hiei is associated with Shimogamo and Kamigamo Shrines because of the spirit that lives in this one rock on the top of the mountain. But as Prof. Boggett says, "history is slowly being erased"; the god-rock is huge, and beautiful, but not marked at all, and surrounded by flowers. (The Hiei Garden Museum has lots of reproductions of Monet and other impressionist painters next to really pretty, but totally random, European style gardens. ???) Apparently the Japanese government, in their attempts to nationalize Shinto, are trying to cover up the way Shinto mythologies stem from local legends...

After this, we went to a Buddhist temple complex, Enryakuji, which was way too touristy for being on the top of this mountain. But the west side of the complex was totally deserted, and I saw the tomb of Saicho, one of the most important people in the history of Japanese Buddhism.

This notice was in my mailbox this morning

2008-10-29T22:57:00.001-07:00

ALERT

The Japanese and Japanese Culture Center, and the Foreign Exchange Student Center, sent out a message advising students to be on the alert for groups engaged in religious proselytizing. Since these groups seem to be particularly intent on targeting foreign-exchange students, AKP received this notification. The notice characterizes this religious group as "evil," and indicates that they are most likely to lure unsuspecting students into their clutches through feigned connections with clubs, by asking for help with their surveys, or through suggestions of language exchange, after which their modus operandi is to forcefully importune the student to join their sect. Cases of mind control are not unheard of, and instances of psychological, physical, and economic suffering to the point they disrupt a student's academic life are common. In the event you are solicited by one of these groups, please resist their entreaties, give them no personal information, and report their presence to the AKP office immediately.

Doing these things that I do, part 2

2008-10-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

Now I will describe the structure of a taiko practice. My last class on wednesdays ends at 430, so if I catch the appropriate train I can be home as early as 515. Between 620 and 630 I need to leave for taiko practice. I ride my homestay dad's bike, and it's uphill the whole way there, and this bike ride takes me about 25 minutes. The bike is a terrible Japanese bike and of course has no gears, so this is a pretty good warm-up. I arrive at the culture center and help carry drums from the storage room to the practice room upstairs. By seven, most people (out of about 30 in the group) have arrived. 7-740 is 'basic training'; this is my favorite part. Sensei leads with a basic beat and everyone follows. This practice is for rhythms and for taiko form. 740-820 is called 'kiyari' practice. Kiyari is a style of taiko where the drums are placed sideways, and one person plays each end of the drum. This is really hard, but it seems to be one of Uzu's signature pieces, and it's getting easier. I usually don't participate in the 820-900 practice because it is usually much more complicated pieces far beyond my skill set. But I have a lot of fun watching and trying to understand the patterns that hold the rhythms together.

Last week, in addition to normal practice on Wednesday I also attended a bonus practice on Friday. This practice was almost entirely devoted to the teaching and learning of one of those more complicated pieces. I don't remember what it was called, maybe something about a fisherman and a mountain? Only about half the group showed up, which created a really nice atmosphere for me to learn in. I had an incredible epiphany, that sometimes one arm needs to move way faster than the other arm.

On Monday, I went on an incredible run around my neighborhood, and finally visited this cemetery on a hill really close to my house at the end of my run. I have been thinking about grave sites since reading about the pattern of Grave Sites (70) in the book A Pattern Language. Sometimes, it's really important to remember all stages of the life cycle. I could see Uji and Kyoto extending far into the distance from the top of the hill.

Last night, Kendall and I went to a tea ceremony class in an old ryokan (Japanese-style inn). It's really hard for me to describe the circumstances that brought us to the old ryokan, as well as the actual experience of being in the ryokan and the tea ceremony class, so I'm not going to. But it was amazing, and in two weeks we are going to start practicing tea ceremony.

I am about to go to another taiko practice.

Lost! ....lost?

2008-10-18T00:19:00.001-07:00

When I am with my friends I tend to be Hurley. Not really a leader, pretty much just going with the flow, very easy going and laid back.

When I am at taiko I am Locke. I know what I am doing, or at least I know what I am supposed to be doing. At times it is difficult, sometimes exhausting, but no one can stand in my way of my mission. There is no rational explanation, but I feel it is the absolute right thing to be doing.

Most of the time, walking around, with my homestay parents, I am Sun/Jin (or else everyone around me is Sun/Jin). How can I learn to speak the same language? What is the process of communication?

I think in some ways it was very Kate of me to come to Japan at all. What was I afraid of at UCLA, or at Whitman? Why has it been so important to me to keep running?

I don't think I am ever Jack, but I don't think thats a bad thing. Occasionally I do have moments of true, genuine leadership, but in these moments, I never forget that I'm not just their leader, I'm also one of them.

Very frequently I am Desmond. It's hard to stay in the present moment. Very frequently I see something and I am suddenly somewhere else, in a different place, in a different time, in the past, or the future. This seems natural.

When I first got here I felt a bit like Charlie. But now I have adjusted to island life, and if the moment ever comes when I find a plane full of Virgin Mary statues, I too will chuck them all into the sea.

Fall Field Trip

2008-10-12T05:22:00.000-07:00

This field trip was really hard, really stressful, really fun, a good use of AKP's money, full of weird juxtapositions. I'm still having trouble expressing what it was like to be at Hiroshima and Miyajima, but Italo Calvino (in Invisible Cities) says it real good.

This is what it was like to be in Hiroshima:

Cities & Memory 5

In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old post cards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of a bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two young ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits: admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of metropolitan Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old post cards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one's eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.

Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city, which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.

We went to the Genbaku Dome (the structure below where the a-bomb was dropped); we walked through the Peace Park and went to the Peace Memorial Museum; we got okonomiyaki (the most delicious food in the whole world); we listened to a hibakusha (a-bomb survivor) tell her story; we went to Miyajima.

This is what it was like to be on Miyajima:

Cities & Signs 1

You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.

Finally the journey leads to the city of Tamara. You penetrate it along streets thick with signboards jutting from the walls. The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things: pincers point out the tooth-drawer's house; a tankard, the tavern; halberds, the barracks; scales, the grocer's. Statues and shields depict lions, dolphins, towers, stars: a sign that something--who knows what?--has as its sign a lion or a dolphin or a tower or a star... The wares, too, which the vendors display on their stalls are valuable not in themselves but as signs of other things: the embroidered headband stands for elegance; the gilded palanquin, power; the volumes of Averroes, learning; the ankle bracelet, voluptuousness. Your gaze scans the streets as if they were written pages: the city says everything you must think, makes you repeat her discourse, and while you believe you are visiting Tamara you are only recording the names with which she defines herself and all her parts.

However the city may really be, beneath this thick coating of signs, whatever it may contain or conceal, you leave Tamara without having discovered it. Outside, the lands stretches, empty, to the horizon; the sky opens, with speeding clouds. In the shape that chance and wind give the clouds, you are already intent on recognizing figures: a sailing ship, a hand, an elephant. . . .

We saw the famous torii at the Itsukushima Shrine; we had a room party in the hotel; we tried to escape the tourists; we went hiking on Mt. Misen and had fabulous views of the Inland Sea; we went to Daisho-in, a beautiful Buddhist temple; we came back to Kyoto.

Today I wanted to go to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens, but it's still early autumn: the leaves have yet to explode into red. So instead, Jason K. and I went hiking up Kurama-san and down into the valley town of Kibune.

Friendship and Exhaustion Collide

2008-10-09T05:25:00.000-07:00

Sunday, I think to commemorate the Uji Tea Festival, the Cultural Center where I practice taiko held sort of a 'cultural center festival.' I thought the building was just a regular community center, but it isn't at all. Many kinds of cultural groups practice or hold meetings there--drawing, bonsai, other taiko groups, European-style flower arrangement.... Uzu, my taiko dojo, had a performance, which I watched, but that was only 15 minutes of the day. The bulk of the morning and afternoon was spent doing "mochi-tsuki," or mochi making. This was one of the coolest processes I have ever seen. The rice had already been soaking in water overnight. After setting up all sorts of tables and stoves, we started steaming the rice in huge pots stacked on top of each other, 6 pots at a time. When one pot of rice was ready (how this was determined I have no idea), it was brought over to the huge wooden mortar, where one person beat it with a huge wooden mallet and another person kneaded it. The rhythm these two people kept was a lot like taiko. I was part of the rotation of people wielding the mallet, and beating the rice was really hard work. But, the end result was delicious rice balls!

Sometime in the middle of the day, my taiko colleague Toshiaki took me to a store so I could buy tabi, traditional Japanese sock/shoes to wear while playing taiko. I thought he was going to take me to a taiko equipment store, so I was really surprised when we pulled up at this huge overwhelming Japanese wal-mart called Konan. On the way, he told me more about the connections between taiko and mochi-making. The beating of the rice, the use of the mallet, and the rhythm created, are all very reminiscent of taiko; beyond that, there is a specific style of taiko that was performed after the rice harvest. Harvesting rice is a huge communal effort, and in the celebration that followed, people would play taiko in gratitude to the rice kami (?) for allowing them to have a good harvest. We talked a bit more about how Japan and America appreciate nature differently, before moving the conversation on to such topics as the election and the Doobie Brothers.

Taiko practice Wednesday night was really fun. Especially after making mochi with all those people, it is starting to feel like a real community.

Today was Yom Kippur. Jasons and I took the day off school, and the three of us fasted and went to Ryoanji, a temple with a famous rock garden. We stared at the rocks for a really long time and meditated on the past year. I thought a lot about how the rocks reminded me of islands. In my gardens class, we learned about how this one type of moss looks like a cryptomeria tree, so to look down on the moss is supposed to emulate the feeling of looking down on a forest of cryptomeria trees. So these rocks had tiny islands of this moss around them, and I thought about if they were islands, what it would be like to be a person living on one of them. Would this person have any idea about the existence of the other islands, let alone the people living on them?

Ryoanji was really crazy. It still astounds me to think about all the things I thought and felt while I was there. At the Welcome Party, only 10 minutes after meeting my host dad, he told me that I will only be able to understand Ryoanji if I go more than 15 times. And he is probably right. It was so empty, but so full of meaning. Those rocks have been there for hundreds of years, and will continue to be there, exactly as they are, probably for several hundred more.

We broke the fast at a pretty great Nepalese restaurant, and then we bought Sigur Ros tickets. Tomorrow I head off with all of AKP for our fall field trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima.

Here I'm alive, everything all of the time

2008-10-05T06:09:00.000-07:00

What is the experience of going to a Japanese concert? Hannah and Jasons and I booked it to the Osaka Municipal Gymnasium, or Osakashi Chuoh Taiikukan, on Thursday after school. Class ended at 430, the doors opened at 5 and the show started at 630. We walked into the venue around 645 and Modeselektor was in full swing. I parted from my friends because I accidentally bought a seated ticket instead of a standing ticket, but this turned out to be a really good mistake. I had a great view of the stage, and pretty close, on the left side. Hannah had bought her ticket from the states, so she was standing really close, and Jasons were pretty far back, but Jason's other friend was able to sneak them into some really good seats on the right side. While Modeselektor pumped out some crazy techno, I ruminated for a bit on the building and the crowd. In doing research for how to buy this concert ticket, I stumbled onto this website: http://www.hku.hk/mech/sbe/case_study/case/jap/Osaka_Gym/index.html, which explains a lot of the weird structural/architectural designs for the stadium. And I was really in awe at how cool the interior was.

The crowd was so different than anyone I have seen yet in Kyoto. I actually wanted to be friends with most of the people I saw--both Japanese people and foreigners. This kind of judgement was based on clothes, hair, and piercings. It wasn't until going to Osaka that I realized some of Kyoto's biggest flaws. Kyoto is not hip, it's old and full of tourists. They really do seem like different cities. On the train in, Jason pointed out some of the huge skyscrapers and downtown areas, and I felt utterly overwhelmed in Osaka's big train station in ways I have never felt in Kyoto-eki. And they are far from each other! I still can't believe that Jason wakes up in Osaka and then spends all day in Kyoto. Every day.

There is so much more I want to explore in Kyoto, but this trip made me also want to plunge into the depths of Osaka. Could it be, though, that Osaka and Kyoto are really just two neighborhoods within the greater Kansai area? And what of the train commute? All I really saw was trains: the way the Hankyu line went from Shijo/Karasuma in downtown Kyoto straight through to the big Osaka station, two subway transfers, and then arrival at the venue. Here's what Italo Calvino has to say about these two cities:

"The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins. In the last pages of the atlas there is an outpouring of networks without beginning or end, cities in the shape of Los Angeles, in the shape of Kyoto-Osaka, without shape."

And then....Radiohead came on. The concert was pretty much the same as a concert in the states. In the beginning, Thom Yorke said 'konban wa' instead of good evening, and every once in a while he tried to say 'arigato gozaimasu' but sort of butchered it. He mumbled some jokes throughout, which were enjoyable, all the more so because I knew that I was one of a very few people who understood them. The set design was the same as when I saw them at Outside Lands in August, and I realized this was the first time I had seen a band twice on the same tour. They played a lot of the same songs but also a lot of different ones. During the show, I thought a lot about the experience of being at Outside Lands, and how that experience was extremely emotional. This was just a great show. Here is the set (if you are interested):

Reckoner

Optimistic

There There

15 Step

All I Need

You and Whose Army?

Weird Fishes

The Gloaming

Videotape

Morning Bell

Faust Arp

No Surprises

Jigsaw Falling Into Place

Idioteque

The National Anthem

Nude

Bodysnatchers

1st Encore: Airbag

Knives Out

Just

Where I End and You Begin

Planet Telex

2nd encore: Fog

Karma Police

Everything in it's Right Place

wow!!!

you think it's like this but it's really like this

2008-10-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

The Suntory Whiskey distillery at Yamazaki was probably some of the cleanest fun I have had yet in this country. No joke! Sure, we drank some whiskey, but the whole day was very reminiscent of middle school. I went to the Yamazaki station on the JR line and waited with Jason K. for Richard and his host family to pick us up. I thought it was just Richard's host dad who was taking us all to the factory, but suddenly two cars pulled up: one filled with Richard, Jason B., and Richard's host parents, and the other with Richard's host sister and host niece (nine year old Miu is one of the cutest little girls I have ever spent time with) and an empty backseat. We headed to the factory, and really appreciated how clean and sweet the air smelled. Shinjiro Torii chose Yamazaki as the site of the distillery because of the fresh air and water. The water there is so fresh that even Rikyu, famed Japanese master of tea ceremony, built a teahouse in Yamazaki. We learned some really interesting things about the production of whiskey, not my favorite of alcoholic beverages, and then we went to the tasting room. When we left the factory, we went back to Richard's house, where we all enjoyed a delicious meal together and talked and played some games. Jason K. and I weren't spending the night, so Richard's host parents gave us a ride to the station and even bought us our tickets back to Kyoto Station (just like as would have happened in middle school!) A good time was had by all.

The weather the past week and a half or so has been pretty rainy, which was really dragging me down. I woke up this morning and it was cloudy but by the time school was over the sky was totally clear, a beautiful autumn day.

Today at school, I did two really important things between my first Japanese test of the year (which went pretty well, I think) and my gardens class. 1. I watched Tampopo, an amazing Japanese film from the 80s. I walked into the lounge and it had just started, and I was totally hooked. It's about food and etiquette, sort of focusing on one man's quest to find the perfect noodle restaurant. But this story is intercut with scenes that have nothing to do with this man except to illustrate different variations on the theme "food and etiquette in Japanese society." I highly recommend it. 2. After the movie, I bought a new box of colored pencils. I mysteriously lost the green in the box I found in my desk (where do vanished objects go?), and the purple was too short to use effectively. And green and purple are two of the most important colors, so a new box was totally necessary. My art project is coming along nicely, I have 10 squares completed (out of a total 64), I am a little behind if I want to finish by the end of the semester but I'm not worried.

Taiko practice was really fun today. I got some explanations on how to read the sheet music I received, so now I can actually practice at home. I also saw today that not everyone there is really good at taiko. I'm not sure anyone is quite as unskilled as I am, but there is a very evident range of mastery, which was reassuring. They are having a performance on Sunday, which I am going to, but won't play in. Although I'm a little unclear if it is a performance so much as it is mochi-making (using bachi--taiko drumsticks--to beat the rice). Sunday is the Uji Tea Festival, and this event is part of the community celebration.

Tomorrow I am going to Osaka for the first time this year. I am going to Osaka to see Radiohead at the Osaka Chuoh Taiikukan. Here I go...

Doing these things that I do

2008-09-27T08:02:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-21T05:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-15T07:10:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-11T06:39:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-07T07:47:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-05T06:24:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-01T01:17:00.000-07:00

1:18 am, sept. 1, 2008

I'm about to go to Japan

Here I go