One Hundred Posts (in Solitude)
Here it is, our one hundredth post! Seems kind of pitiable, actually, only one hundred posts in two years, but then again there have been vast stretches of time in which Juli and I have lain catatonic in our cryogenic sleep chambers, with little or nothing to report and lacking the mental wherewithal to report it. Our date for leaving Japan is drawing nigh, so hopefully you've notice that we've rubbed the sleepers from our eyes, stretched our atrophied writing digits, and tried to sum up our daily mundanities with a more pulsar-like regularity.
This weekend was Aoba matsuri (festival), a celebration of Sendai's Aoba-ward, which happens to be the part of town in which we live. Aoba matsuri commemorates the construction of the Toshu-gu shrine, which was completed in 1654. Large floats, called yamaboko are wheeled down Jozenji street, and troupes of dancers perform suzume odori, a traditional jig supposedly improvised by drunken stone-masons upon the completion of Sendai castle, which imitates the fluttering motions of tree swallows (can't make that up). The dance is accompanied by tin whistles, banged pots, and taiko drums playing a distinctive, repetitive refrain.
Juli went up to Kogota Friday night to visit Dan and Andy, and got a crash course in parenting courtesy of Kai, their three month old baby. Apparently, Juli says, the best way to quiet a crying tot is to hold a mirror above his face, rub his tummy, and tell him how handsome he is. Would work for me too, I guess.
The highlight of the weekend was definitely dinner on Saturday night. A month ago, our friends Kyo and Jen told us about this Japanese woman who runs a restaurant out of her apartment. Calling it a restaurant is a bit inaccurate though, as it's only open on weekends and can seat a maximum of five people. The experience is more like going to someone's home, having them fix you an amazing dinner, and then paying them for it. And it was amazing. The woman, whose name I can't recall at the moment, takes regular trips to Italy, where she takes cooking clases. To supplement her income, she makes home-cooked meals for anyone willing to make a reservation. We had a delicious six-course dinner while her tiny dog Gu-chan napped on the nearby couch.
Sunday was a bit lazy. We went into town to watch part of the parade, had lunch with our friend Makiyo, and then I went home to photoshop some images and play copious amounts of online Mario Kart.
Next weekend we're going hiking up to Yamadera, a famous mountain-side temple complex, with some of my school's English teachers.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Hachiman, Little Big Neighborhood
A few days ago I went walking, looking for the highest vantage point from which to photograph Hachiman, our neighborhood. I found a run-down, on-the-verge-of-being-condemned apartment building and scaled its seven story iron fire escape, trying not to imagine how it would pitch and sway during an earthquake like the modestly big one we had last week. At the top I took a few photos and a little school girl, probably seven or eight, came blasting out of her apartment, saw me standing oafishly by the ledge, and came to a dead, silent stop. I turned around to smile and she slunk away toward the elevator. Oh well.
Here are the photos. I've been playing around with making fake tilt-shift images lately, a process that skews perspective in such a way that the resulting photographs look like miniature model train sets. Let me know what you think.
Click on any of the images to go to my flickr site, where you can view full-size versions of the images. Thanks!
A few days ago I went walking, looking for the highest vantage point from which to photograph Hachiman, our neighborhood. I found a run-down, on-the-verge-of-being-condemned apartment building and scaled its seven story iron fire escape, trying not to imagine how it would pitch and sway during an earthquake like the modestly big one we had last week. At the top I took a few photos and a little school girl, probably seven or eight, came blasting out of her apartment, saw me standing oafishly by the ledge, and came to a dead, silent stop. I turned around to smile and she slunk away toward the elevator. Oh well.
Here are the photos. I've been playing around with making fake tilt-shift images lately, a process that skews perspective in such a way that the resulting photographs look like miniature model train sets. Let me know what you think.
Click on any of the images to go to my flickr site, where you can view full-size versions of the images. Thanks!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Reverse Culture Shock
I'm going to go on the record here and make a few predictions about what I'll be thinking when Julianna and I come home from Japan in August.
"No one is staring at me."
Imagine, for a moment, that you are waiting for a bus. Across the street a Hitler impersonator in drag is tying balloon animals for an imaginary crowd of no one. Imagine a man with backwards-jointed faun knees doing backflips outside the post office. Imagine, then, the rubbernecking pandemonium of Amazonian nudist beauties lining vast stretches of America's highways in protest of the Iraq war. In Japan, I illicit more stares than all three. I have provoked deep gasps of amazement and impromptu height comparisons with complete strangers. In a way, I will miss being perceived as different. However, the "otherness" of my appearance has also led to wary stares, never more apparent than when I'm taking public transportation. "The Stare" is an unavoidable feature of life in Japan for a foreigner, and I have a feeling I'll either love the slinking anonymity of being back among blond-fronded giants, or I'll have a mild identity crisis over not being noticed. It's like Naomi Watts in I Heart Huckabees: "Stop looking at me. Don't look at me. No, look at me. Please everybody look at me!"
"Everyone is red and fat and poorly dressed.
I have to hand it to the Japanese for being slim, trim, and generally sharp-looking people. In America, the girl out shopping in her paw-print-on-the-ass sweat pants is a virtual pandemic. Transported to Japan, her laissez faire fashion sense would be brutally and deservedly dismantled.
"I just spoke in Japanese to the waitress."
This happened already, actually, when Juli and I were home for Christmas. Straight off the plane my parents took us to The Olive Garden, where I bumped into a waitress and repeatedly mumbled "sumimasen" (I'm sorry) while making mini self-depreciating head bows. For a few months I'll probably make a gutteral "uhnn" when I mean "yes," and please don't stare at me if I bob my head like a disconcerted bird when I'm talking on the phone.
I'm going to go on the record here and make a few predictions about what I'll be thinking when Julianna and I come home from Japan in August.
"No one is staring at me."
Imagine, for a moment, that you are waiting for a bus. Across the street a Hitler impersonator in drag is tying balloon animals for an imaginary crowd of no one. Imagine a man with backwards-jointed faun knees doing backflips outside the post office. Imagine, then, the rubbernecking pandemonium of Amazonian nudist beauties lining vast stretches of America's highways in protest of the Iraq war. In Japan, I illicit more stares than all three. I have provoked deep gasps of amazement and impromptu height comparisons with complete strangers. In a way, I will miss being perceived as different. However, the "otherness" of my appearance has also led to wary stares, never more apparent than when I'm taking public transportation. "The Stare" is an unavoidable feature of life in Japan for a foreigner, and I have a feeling I'll either love the slinking anonymity of being back among blond-fronded giants, or I'll have a mild identity crisis over not being noticed. It's like Naomi Watts in I Heart Huckabees: "Stop looking at me. Don't look at me. No, look at me. Please everybody look at me!"
"Everyone is red and fat and poorly dressed.
I have to hand it to the Japanese for being slim, trim, and generally sharp-looking people. In America, the girl out shopping in her paw-print-on-the-ass sweat pants is a virtual pandemic. Transported to Japan, her laissez faire fashion sense would be brutally and deservedly dismantled.
"I just spoke in Japanese to the waitress."
This happened already, actually, when Juli and I were home for Christmas. Straight off the plane my parents took us to The Olive Garden, where I bumped into a waitress and repeatedly mumbled "sumimasen" (I'm sorry) while making mini self-depreciating head bows. For a few months I'll probably make a gutteral "uhnn" when I mean "yes," and please don't stare at me if I bob my head like a disconcerted bird when I'm talking on the phone.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Golden Week
Golden Week is Japan's equivalent of Spring Brink, but with marginally less booze. Certainly no breasts are being shown, anyhow. Rather, the week is golden because it contains three national holidays. This year, two of those holidays fell on Saturday and Sunday, which cut Golden Week unceremoniously short and demoted it, as my friend Ewan said, to "Bronze Week." Still, we tried to make the best of it.
Kaori, one of our Japanese friends we knew in Seattle, decided to come up to Sendai and spend the weekend with us. We had a long standing invitation to stay at our friend Aaron's place, so the three of us, like Basho himself, made our way into Miyagi's deep northern interior. Aaron's place is in a small town, and unlike most apartment-bound JETs, he lives by himself in a self-standing, cottage-like house. Like any good Portlander worth his salt, Aaron is a great outdoorsman, and so he took us around to some of his favorite natural haunts, including a swimming hole where we found fossilized leaves (see below), and a short hike up to a fairly magnificent waterfall. After the hiking we had lunch at a great family-owned roadside restaurant/produce market, where we saw a grandmother kill a giant Asian hornet, the size of her fist, with a tiny fly swatter. Our hunger satiated, Aaron took us to Naruko, a small town famous for its onsen resorts. The best onsen are natural outdoor hotsprings, and the one we went to was beautiful. It overlooked a river and the blossoms from an adjacent cherry tree drifted down upon us while we were bathing. That night, after a big meal, I played guitar with Aaron and Kaori joined in on a bunch of Belle and Sebastian songs.
Then, on Tuesday, we met up with Joy and Sergio and went to the Yagiyama zoo, which is near my visit school. It's a small zoo, and most of the animals looked depressed, except for the monkeys, who were very clearly bi-polar. Still, we had a good time and Juli was seconds away from hopping the fence into the tiger cage when he started purring his throaty tiger purr.
Golden Week is Japan's equivalent of Spring Brink, but with marginally less booze. Certainly no breasts are being shown, anyhow. Rather, the week is golden because it contains three national holidays. This year, two of those holidays fell on Saturday and Sunday, which cut Golden Week unceremoniously short and demoted it, as my friend Ewan said, to "Bronze Week." Still, we tried to make the best of it.
Kaori, one of our Japanese friends we knew in Seattle, decided to come up to Sendai and spend the weekend with us. We had a long standing invitation to stay at our friend Aaron's place, so the three of us, like Basho himself, made our way into Miyagi's deep northern interior. Aaron's place is in a small town, and unlike most apartment-bound JETs, he lives by himself in a self-standing, cottage-like house. Like any good Portlander worth his salt, Aaron is a great outdoorsman, and so he took us around to some of his favorite natural haunts, including a swimming hole where we found fossilized leaves (see below), and a short hike up to a fairly magnificent waterfall. After the hiking we had lunch at a great family-owned roadside restaurant/produce market, where we saw a grandmother kill a giant Asian hornet, the size of her fist, with a tiny fly swatter. Our hunger satiated, Aaron took us to Naruko, a small town famous for its onsen resorts. The best onsen are natural outdoor hotsprings, and the one we went to was beautiful. It overlooked a river and the blossoms from an adjacent cherry tree drifted down upon us while we were bathing. That night, after a big meal, I played guitar with Aaron and Kaori joined in on a bunch of Belle and Sebastian songs.
Then, on Tuesday, we met up with Joy and Sergio and went to the Yagiyama zoo, which is near my visit school. It's a small zoo, and most of the animals looked depressed, except for the monkeys, who were very clearly bi-polar. Still, we had a good time and Juli was seconds away from hopping the fence into the tiger cage when he started purring his throaty tiger purr.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Two From the Archives
Last year, a few of us when up to see the "snow monsters," trees encased in ice, at Mt. Zao. This is me trying, unsuccessfully, to hop from one tree to the other.
April is campaign season in Japan, and last year we lived directly above a local candidate's campaign office. His stump speeches often woke us up on Saturday mornings.
Last year, a few of us when up to see the "snow monsters," trees encased in ice, at Mt. Zao. This is me trying, unsuccessfully, to hop from one tree to the other.
April is campaign season in Japan, and last year we lived directly above a local candidate's campaign office. His stump speeches often woke us up on Saturday mornings.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Park Golf
On Tuesday, a bunch of us ventured north to the tiny town of Tajiri to engage in the fierce geriatric sport of "Park Golf," a three way hybrid of mini-golf, real golf, and croquet. Park golf was invented in Hokkaido in 1983, and while I don't claim to know the history of the sport, I assume the shrunken size of the courses has something to do with the high cost and unavailability of land in Japan. A park golf course is composed of nine holes and must not exceed 500 meters in total length. Standard golf rules apply, but "parkers," as they are known, are limited to one ball and one extremely short (for me) club.
With the exception of one or two families with children, we were the sole representatives of the "under 65" crowd. Old ladies with question mark postures hunched over the tees and thwacked away while their bespectacled husbands reviewed anxiously their scorecard's every chickenscratched number. Attire was thoroughly professional and accessorized to the nines with shoe-bound ball carriers and laminated scorecard protectors. Floppy hats were in abundance.
Not to be outdone by a bunch of toothless retirees, we came decked out in all manner of golf fashion. Pant cuffs were rolled, socks were hitched, and I made damn sure to doff my cap any chance I got. The old folks looked on with bemused curiosity, the men snapping their gums, the little women prim, their cotton candy hair bobbing in the late spring breeze.
On Tuesday, a bunch of us ventured north to the tiny town of Tajiri to engage in the fierce geriatric sport of "Park Golf," a three way hybrid of mini-golf, real golf, and croquet. Park golf was invented in Hokkaido in 1983, and while I don't claim to know the history of the sport, I assume the shrunken size of the courses has something to do with the high cost and unavailability of land in Japan. A park golf course is composed of nine holes and must not exceed 500 meters in total length. Standard golf rules apply, but "parkers," as they are known, are limited to one ball and one extremely short (for me) club.
With the exception of one or two families with children, we were the sole representatives of the "under 65" crowd. Old ladies with question mark postures hunched over the tees and thwacked away while their bespectacled husbands reviewed anxiously their scorecard's every chickenscratched number. Attire was thoroughly professional and accessorized to the nines with shoe-bound ball carriers and laminated scorecard protectors. Floppy hats were in abundance.
Not to be outdone by a bunch of toothless retirees, we came decked out in all manner of golf fashion. Pant cuffs were rolled, socks were hitched, and I made damn sure to doff my cap any chance I got. The old folks looked on with bemused curiosity, the men snapping their gums, the little women prim, their cotton candy hair bobbing in the late spring breeze.
A Recent Acquisition
Last week I (Casey) bought a used Mamiya RZ67 from a small camera shop here in Sendai. A staple in fashion photography (though quickly being supplanted by digital), the RZ67 is a 6x7 medium format camera with a rotating back, which allows you to shoot in landscape or portrait orientations without moving the camera body. It's a modular system, so the lenses, viewfinders, and film backs are all interchangeable. At around 7lbs it's a beast to carry around, but I managed to handhold it all day Saturday while my school was having its annual sports festival.
Last week I (Casey) bought a used Mamiya RZ67 from a small camera shop here in Sendai. A staple in fashion photography (though quickly being supplanted by digital), the RZ67 is a 6x7 medium format camera with a rotating back, which allows you to shoot in landscape or portrait orientations without moving the camera body. It's a modular system, so the lenses, viewfinders, and film backs are all interchangeable. At around 7lbs it's a beast to carry around, but I managed to handhold it all day Saturday while my school was having its annual sports festival.
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