Ben In Japan

The Beginning of New Things

2006-08-26T11:35:00.000+09:00

So, as of today I have a new homepage/blog. You will notice how creatively it is titled:

Update your bookmarks and come on over!

The Last Post For Ben In Japan

2006-08-23T11:50:00.000+09:00

It feels awfully strange to be writing Ben In Japan from New York, but I have one last set of pictures, and it would be wrong to just never post them. I've been back a week now, moved back home, saw friends, had a party, got a lame American cell phone, drove a car on the right side of the road, and got used to speaking English again. It's tough sometimes, especially when I try to remember something back in Japan, and I find the memory already fading. A whole year of my life, a routine, a job, friends, a home - and as soon as I stepped off the plane in New York, it felt like I had just been on a long vacation. I am so glad I took all the photos I did, because only when I am looking at them do I remember everything, even the things I didn't photograph. Something about those images - each one is like a little window I can poke my head through and look around.

So the really strange part is that I now have to post pictures from a week ago that feel like they are from a different planet. I'm just going to put them up, and I'll explain where I feel it's necessary.

Day before the last day, at the half-pipe.

Mori and Naoki.

The night before my last night, I was invited to a big dinner with the Nakamuras. Everyone was there, and the food was delicious. It was hard in the last few days, because everything I did was the last. The last day on the boat, the last time on the scooter, the last drive to Kinoe, the last dinner with Mori. It's not easy, that.

Mori, lighting a cigarette ridiculously.

After dinner it was time to go see fireworks by boat. Both the Nakamura boats went out, and when we got to the spot, we tied them together and broke out the snacks and drinks.

Hiroko took this picture of her parents which I like a lot.

After the fireworks was a huge party, which combined goodbye to me, celebration of summer for all the young people on the island, and a live show by a musician from Hiroshima. It was crazy and fun and exciting and I think I'm going to keep the photos and memories of it for myself.

The next day was my last day in Japan. It was pretty full, starting with a mildly hung-over barbecue at the half-pipe.

Me, Kawamoto-san, and his son, who was one of my students.

I did some chopstick grilling with Hiroko.

Me and my bro, for a last photo.

A last dip in the inland sea.

Pretty idyllic, right?

We went out for a last drive at sunset, up around those windy roads I love so much and miss now that I'm home, views of mountains and islands all around, the sound of cicadas and birds in the heavy air - it was pretty silent as we drove, I was just trying to remember everything, and I think Mori might have been too.

And that was it. I don't remember what I had for dinner, but that night I had a number of long and difficult goodbyes, final looks at people who I had been friends with all year, people who had taught me Japanese and taken me places I never could have gone otherwise, and each one of them, I would have to just look them in the eye and say goodbye. It wasn't easy; there were tears.

After about an hour of sleep, I woke up at 4:30 and got ready to go to the ferry with Tabo-san. He picked me up at five, just as the night started turning into day. We loaded my stuff into the car, put Neko in her cage, and then got on our way. This was really the last - last view of my house, last drive through Osaki, last sight of every shop and place I had come to know over the course of the year - and before I knew it we were at Shiromizu ferry port at 5:20 in the morning, 40 minutes before the ferry. Bit by bit, people started showing up. First were a couple adult conversation class students, then one of my best students from Higashino Junior High. A car pulled up with a worker from the Board of Education, and then Mori's gold minivan pulled up with him, his two sisters, and his mother. People kept coming, more students, the assistant principal from one of my schools, Matsuura-san, my translator and helper in all things official, and Akko, my self-described "mom in Japan."

I'm standing on the ferry, and they are standing on the dock. This is about as sad as it gets.

Actually no wait. This is as sad as it gets. Watching your friends slowly drift away on a tiny Japanese island that you have come to think of as home. Watching the sun come up on the most beautiful place you've ever been, seeing it get further and further away, knowing that you can never really return, and knowing that a chapter of your life is slowly and deliberately coming to an end. That is the saddest thing.

More and more last views.

Last look at the island.

Sad as it was, it was an absolutely beautiful morning. It made me wish I had gotten up at 5:30 before, just to get out and see things like this.

Tabo-san, my boss, driver, and go-to guy.

And that was it - off I went, to the airport, through security, onto the plane, and then out of Hiroshima. The camera stayed with me the whole time, so I didn't stop taking pictures.

Last photo of Hiroshima prefecture.

Last look at Japan.

And 15 hours later, coming down at JFK in New York.

That about sums up Ben In Japan. I am no longer in Japan, and so this blog will stop updating. I have a new one almost ready to go, and when it is ready, keep an eye on this page for the new address. Expect it in the next week or so, though I can't make any promises.

For those of you who have read this blog, commented, put yourself on the map, or just flipped through the pictures, thank you. I have enjoyed every minute of writing it, and I'm glad this place managed to find an audience. I hope you'll keep reading the next one, which will be slightly different, but hopefully still good.

Good night, and good bye.

Ben

The End

2006-08-14T01:04:00.000+09:00

Well, this is it. I don't leave tomorrow, but I am so busy that there will be no more time in the next two days for another blog post, so this is the one, the final bit of writing and pictures from Japan.

I feel like I should be writing an acceptance speech here, because it feels like I have won something. Rather than a job post I held for a year, it feels like I am coming up on the last days of some sort of all-expense-paid fantasy trip. I have lived an entire year on a tiny sub-tropical island waking up to the sun rising over the mountains, and going to sleep with the smell of the sea. I have wandered ancient temples with just the sounds wind in the bamboo for company. I have found brilliant starfish of every color 20 feet below the surface of the inland sea. I have found more beauty within 20 minutes of my house than I have ever seen before in my life. I have become comfortable and at ease in a culture that is utterly alien to me at first. I have taken 15,000 pictures. I have met some of the most wonderful people I have ever met anywhere, and I have gained a friend like no other. I have come to think of Japan as home. I have been happy.

I haven't done it all alone though. First and foremost, and just beyond anything I could ever have hoped for, there is Mori. Without him, this would have been a very different year. I have found myself saying recently that whenever I was working, I wasn't in love with life here, but as soon as I was off work, my life turned into the nonstop stream of joy that you see on this blog. That is largely due to Mori, who showed me things, took me places, and brought me into his life in a complete and total way. Without him I never would have gone fishing, I never would have gone out on a boat, I never would have found the delicious little restaurants scattered around, I never would have felt like I had really made friends and a life here. There is no way I can ever repay him for the incredible kindness he has shown me, but I can thank him here, and then again tomorrow when we go swimming together, then have dinner at his house, and then go out to watch fireworks at the last summer festival from his boat. So thank you Mori. Thank you for everything you have done, thank you for everything you have shown me, and I'll see you in New York, ne?

Today at dinner, Mori told me he couldn't come to the ferry port to say goodbye on Wednesday at 6 in the morning. I said "too early?" and he said "No. Too sad." He said he didn't think he could say goodbye to me at the ferry port, but he could probably come in his boat and wave a final goodbye across the water.

God this is hard to write.

Mori isn't the only one, though he is the only one I have to say goodbye to. Over the course of the year there have been a few people I have stayed in close touch with back home. I won't name those people because you know who you are, but you should know that if it hadn't been for the friendship, honesty, and warmth that I have gotten in bits and pieces, e-mails, letters, packages, and IMs - I would be dreading coming home. You have reminded me what great people I know back home, and you have given me so much to look forward to when I do get off that plane at JFK. Thank you, you have no idea how much your correspondence has meant to me.

To everyone else who read the blog, or just dropped me an e-mail now and then, thank you too. It is easy to feel like you are lost and alone when the nearest English speaker is across a cold sea, and your family is thousands of miles away, and yet knowing there was a group of people who kept up with my life here, who read and remembered and kept in mind the things I was doing - that helped a lot in some of the lonelier moments.

How on earth does one transition from that to the photos of the last couple days and what I did today? I propose that it is impossible to do smoothly, but I have photos, and I need to tell you about what I've been up to. Here we go.

A couple days ago, when I went to pick up my name stamp, I barely avoided being caught in a huge downpour. I took this picture, and then got back on the road.

Recently, I've been counting down sunsets. When I saw this one, it was four more, because that's as many many times as I'm going to see the sun set in Japan before I go.

Yesterday, I went to Hiroshima with Graham and Dave to do some shopping for them, get them cell phones, and look for a couple things myself. As usual, I hardly took any photos in Hiroshima, but I did take this one. This sounds awful, but whenever I am with someone and they back off taking a photo of someone because they say the person is too scary, or taking the photo would be creepy, I am instantly compelled to take the picture. It's kind of a cavalier move, I'm sort of being a jerk with my actions, but on the other hand after my time in Tokyo, I really think that the difference between a good photo and a missed chance that you will remember for a long time is that moment when you say "that is a great photo, but I don't know if I am comfortable taking it." This one is for Dave, and it was not too creepy, in the end.

At Round 1, in Hiroshima.

The Hiroshima Kagoyahime Bus. Oft-ridden, never photographed.

Coming into Takehara on the bus.

Fast forward to today. I went to Mihara with Mori and The Circus to attend a skate competition, and yesterday Dave left his backpack (with video camera, purchases, etc.) on the bus. We drove him to Takehara bus station to get the bag (of course found, kept, and probably cleaned and ironed while they held it too.) And then we dropped him back at the ferry, and then headed to Mihara.

Me, Dave, and the rest of the crew.

In Mihara, waiting for the thing to start. The little kid on the right - he lives right next door to me. He used to come down to the water and watch everyone skate, he is shy and quiet, but he loved watching the skating, and seemed to sort of idolize these older guys who could launch their skateboards into the air and somehow land on them again when they came down. He got a skateboard, and now everyone in The Circus is constantly helping him, teaching him, and he's down by the water skating more often than any of the other skaters. The guys all call him "Tabo" so I figured that was his family name. I finally asked Mori today, and he was like "no, no, it's a nickname - 'Taabo.'" I still didn't get it, even with an emphasized long a, and then I saw his skateboard. Written on it in spray paint is "Turbo" - that's his nickname. Frankly, that's the coolest nickname ever.

Turbo, who is forever in my mind Tabo - watching Mori do a kickflip.

It rained a bit, so we set about taking a good picture of Mori jumping the railing into the skating area.

Mori, with my video camera. Right after this, I have a video of Mori holding my camera.

Region Plaza in Mihara - where the skate competition was held.

We got back around 6, and this was the sight out over the water as we drove home.

Not bad, not bad. 2 more sunsets.

It was the Kaidenma - the wooden boat races that I photographed a year ago today. The boats had already passed, but the spectators were still about, and they made for some beautiful photographs.

And that's it. I will continue taking pictures obviously, but they won't be up here until sometime next week. I have no idea what the posts will be like, but I want this to be a complete record, so keep an eye here for a little while longer. Thank you for reading this far, and good night.

Parties, Parties, Parties

2006-08-13T00:15:00.000+09:00

A quick one tonight, but really it is a quick one every night. I am barreling to the end of my time here, and every day starts early and ends late. I have been getting odd shocks of searing pain in my head, and I think they are from lack of sleep. Oh well, I'll sleep on the plane home - I certainly won't be carrying any liquids.

I have been feeling the urge to conclude here, to write something that will tie up this entire amazing year beautifully and concisely, and simultaneously show how much I've grown and how much I've learned. Needless to say, I am having trouble. The other thing I am having trouble with is logistics. I will not be able to blog my departure, as I will be departing and my computer will be flying through the air in parts. I don't want to end on some random note, so I plan on finishing this from home. I wonder what the tone will be, I will try to keep it relevant. I hope it won't take to long to finish, this is really something to be done on site.

Tonight's pictures: Parties all over. First the Board of Education goodbye/welcome party. We went back to the Seifukan beer garden overlooking the sea and the islands, and I took this picture off the side. I have mentioned this before, but I don't know if I could imagine better roads for driving, especially on a scooter. I mean, look at this:

Simply perfection.

Koshida-san and Tabo-san, my noble boss.

It was so nice to be around all my quiet office people (see last post), but to see them having a grand old time.

The sun went down, the moon came out, and it became a beautiful night.

So after the party was over, Tabo-san asked me if I wanted to come do karaoke. I never turn down a chance at karaoke, so off we went. We got to the Ali Baba bar, and Tabo-san started it out, and holy crap he was an absolutely phenomenal singer. He has a huge range, a beautiful vibrato, and incredible sound. I was instantly jealous.

What a romantic - how can I resist?

As Tabo-san wound down, Mori and his crew showed up at the bar. Tabo-san ordered drinks all around, and so it was whiskey for the lot. Yum. Truth be told, I am so tired right now that my eyes are crossing and I can't focus on the screen. Here are the last three pictures, at Ali Baba with Mori and company. I can't count on myself to correctly type captions, so I hope they stand on their own. Good night.

Sorry, Fumiko.

Best Friends Ever?

2006-08-12T01:03:00.000+09:00

Well, the softer dreamier photos got firm "no thank you", so we're back to reality. I've been living down here with Graham for three days now, and yet my photos have not caught up to me moving down yet. Tonight, we remedy the problem.

So, on my last night I indulged in a bit of food:

First, a hellaciously huge steak - the beef here is so marbled with fat, Kobe style, that if you just cook it a little, and eat it still pink in the middle, it practically melts in your mouth. This giant steak is probably a quarter of the size of a big steak back home - the whole thing is less than half an inch thick.

After that, a big chunk of watermelon. As I finished the watermelon, Mori, his sister, and Satoshi showed up at my house for the last night of hanging out at my place. Upon seeing the watermelon, they decreed it was "too big" and "gaijin style" (foreigner style). I beg to differ.

So with a pretty big amount of cleaning left to do, and not a huge amount of time, I set about hanging out with Mori and co., burning CDs, listening to music, talking and playing with Neko.

When I mentioned how much cleaning I had to do, they did a funny thing. We kept sitting around for a few more minutes, and then Mori sat up and said "Ok, we clean with you." And just like that, Mori went from relaxed cat-player to cleaning machine.

This is the last thing you see before your house is cleaned in a flash of brilliant light.

Satoshi washed the dishes, sink, and stove while Mori swept and Hiroko vacuumed the bedroom.

I did the toilet, the shower, and the bathroom. You didn't think I stood around taking pictures, did you?

Rather than the four hours I had assumed, we were done in one. At around 1am we finished up, wiped the last bit of dust off the top of the fridge, and regrouped in my room.

Mori - perpetually on three or four hours of sleep, up at 5am the next day to haul in the nets.

After cleaning, Mori and Hiroko wrote messages on the inside flaps of the last box I shipped home. I wonder if I'll still be able to read them in two months when the boxes come.

I am a model for a company that carries boxes, or at least I was for a few moments.

The next day I was at the Board of Education office, getting ready to go pick up Dave at the airport, and I had my camera, so I decided it was high time to take some pictures. It has gotten to the point where no one even notices if I am pointing my camera around anymore. It is wonderful.

Except for Graham. He hasn't quite figured it out yet.

Tabo-san, my excellent boss. Ex-boss now, I suppose.

Futami-san, suffering from a stomach ache.

Off on the ferry to get Dave.

From there on, the day was incredibly busy and significantly less fun the second time around. Getting someone a new bank account, translating paperwork, and giving up the keys to your apartment are all much less exciting after you've done it once. At least I don't have to do it a third time.

That said, good news on the "awesome things I buy" front. Today, the stationary shop got my new custom hanko delivered from the manufacturer. A hanko, or inkan is the Japanese version of a signature. Here you use a stamp, in any number of shapes or sizes - with your name written in it. I have a crummy little one that I got when I arrived, but I craved a good one. Now I have one, with case.

Yes!

So, that means from here on out (all of two posts, if that) I can sign my posts for real. The stamp says Benjamin Duchac no in (Benjamin Duchac's personal stamp). See you tomorrow, if I can make it.

It's A Wonderful Life

2006-08-10T18:06:00.000+09:00

A day late and with apologies, here I am. I am five days from leaving, and I am sharing Graham's apartment at the moment. I am trying to make the most of every moment of every day, and in that regard I think I have been successful. This means far more photos than I know what to do with, so I think I will up the pace here. I will try to do a post every day that I have some time, so keep an eye on here tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday as well. I am not sure about Monday, and Tuesday will almost certainly be taken up with final packing and disassembling my computer. When I lay it out like that, it really feels like I don't have any time at all. I get the feeling that Ben In Japan will be completed from New York.

A couple things. I recently worked out a technique in Photoshop that makes almost any photo look great, with just a couple easy steps. I have been struggling with this technique, because it is too easy. With thirty seconds of effort, I can do something that used to take me five or ten minutes, and it looks better the short way. I struggle with it also because it gives everything a warm, soft look - generally when I edit my pictures, I work to make the image look like the image in my memory. This effect is not necessarily like what I remember, things are almost too beautiful. I struggle because I can't decide what is more important - a photo that is as close as I can come to what I saw, or a truly beautiful photo. Recently beauty has been winning out by a little, but with it comes tremendous bouts of guilt. Look at the photos here and tell me what you think. About half of them use the new technique in a mild way.

So this is a post about a pretty typical post-work day, waking up early and going to do some various things, and then getting a call from Mori around 11 asking if I want to go diving. I always want to go diving, and when I ask Mori when, he always says "from NOW" and so I grab all my gear and drive over to the boat, fins balanced on the scooter seat, snorkel and mask in the basket, and camera over my shoulder. I inevitably beat Mori to the boat, scooter back to his house, and find him getting ready. On this particular day we were going with Mori's friend Satoshi, Hiroko, and Ron the dog.

Passing the ferry. We all waved as it slipped by.

The Nakamuras.

We got to the spot, and got to work. After about an hour the current was getting so strong that you had to swim hard diagonally down just to hit the right spot on the bottom, and then you had to hang on to rocks in order to not get swept away. On the surface you had to do a slow crawl jus to stay in place, and I was exhausted without even doing the fifteen or twenty foot dives to look for sazae. I finally gave up and climbed out, and went up the rocks to see where we were. It turned out that we were in the most beautiful place imaginable.

Hiroko is out in the tube, Satoshi is in the boat, and that ring of ripples in the middle is Mori who just dove. I love this picture because it looks like we own the place, like it's our own private swimming pool. We didn't own it, but it certainly felt like we did.

Mori, giving up. The bag of sazae is tied to that float.

Remind me again, why I am coming home to a place where I don't have the inland sea right at my door?

This is one of my favorite pictures of Mori. I have many of those, but in this post, there are a couple really good ones, if you ask me.

Also good of Satoshi.

Randomly, while we were sitting: Fighter planes!

So, after we stayed there for a while, we decided to head home, but with a stop along the way - Maru's grave. Remember, Maru is the Nakamura's dog that died a couple months ago - they buried him on an isolated beach near the harbor, and so we went.

That stone marks the grave. Hiroko, who really loved Maru went up to the grave and put her hand on the sand and said "Sashiburi ne, Maru-chan" - "Hi Maru, it's been a while, hasn't it?" It was a touching little gesture, another little window into real Japanese life opening up.

Mori, lighting a cigarette and putting it in the sand. Hiroko said something along the lines of "Maru didn't smoke!" - but Mori had a straight face on, so I think it was a serious moment between the two of them.

We sat on the beach, it was a beautiful spot, with a little breeze and shade from overhanging trees. I found a giant beetle floating in the water and let it go into the trees.

If only all graves could be so beautiful.

Time to go - you can see where Mori and Hiroko petted the sand while talking quietly to Maru.

After diving is another ritual, the hosing off in front of the Fishing Nakamura shop. The hose water is cool, but not cold, and it's really nice to cool down and sit in the shade after a long day of diving. Inevitably Mori's mother comes out to see what we caught, and someone takes off all their clothes and changes in the middle of the street. That day, Ron had tried some swimming, so he got a thorough bath too.

Another new favorite of Mori.

Satoshi, hosing Mori off. Graham saw this picture and said "not to sound like an idiot, but what the hell is going on in that picture?"

Mori's mom, laughing at something.

And so it goes - diving, coming back, rinsing off, heading home to dry off and shake the water out of my ears - and then the next day, we're at it again. This photo is another new favorite of mine, Satoshi took it.

The Last Post From My Apartment

2006-08-07T23:33:00.000+09:00

There have been so many lasts by now that I feel numb to them. I am done with all manner of school, work, and most of my packing. I have gone most places for the last time, I have done most of the things I love for the last time, and now it's a fast sprint to the finish, where I would much rather a slow easy walk. I've finished most everything that I was ready to finish, but as the time comes to ride the ferry for the last time, go fishing for the last time, ride the scooter for the last time, and say goodbye to Mori, I don't know how well that is going to go. For now I am doing as much as I can every day, and while I am tired and busy, I am also happy. I'll just jump into it.

I've been diving (moguro) almost every day. Every day I get better, and every day I see something new and beautiful down fifteen feet below the surface. It's full summer weather here, Hazy and still every day, which makes for some beautiful views out on the water.

My trusty captain.

On Friday, when I was not writing a blog update, I was in Hiroshima for a Peace Walk. The 6th was the 51st anniversary of the bombing, and the weekend is always full of activities. This year the march was on the 4th, speeches on the 5th, and the lantern-floating ceremonies were on the 6th. Mori invited me to come along with him and Fumiko, his girlfriend. We actually headed in right after diving, about an hour after the pictures up there were taken. We got to Hiroshima and made our way to the staging area, and found the group we were to walk with.

This picture does not capture how phenomenally hot it was. We stood in the sun, dripping sweat and no shade in sight.

Once we got under way, the chants started. Someone up in the front of our group would shout something into a megaphone, and then all the marchers would repeat it. By and large, I could understand what they were saying, it was along the lines of "No more Hiroshima, no more Nagasaki!" "No more war!" and so on. Then came one that I wasn't sure I understood until I heard it a second time. It was definitely talking about America and American people, but I didn't know the verb. I asked Mori, and with a very embarrassed face, he told me that it was saying "America, get out of Japan!" Oops. He quickly explained that though it wasn't explicit, it was referring to the military. None the less, every time the shouted that one, I just apologized.

This was the tamest march for anything I have ever seen, and yet the police presence was enormous.

As you can see, Mori takes peace very seriously. That guy in front of Mori is really incredibly thin.

Through a tunnel and across the finish.

After the walk, we got a speech by a sweaty man in a funny hat.

Looking back through the tunnel.

After the march, Mori had to go move the car, so Fumiko and I went to wait for him in a coffee shop. It took him about 20 minutes, and we had our dinks and chatted about things - life in Japan, Mori, fashion, girls, what have you. I do it every day, but I am still happily surprised with myself every time I am able to communicate more than just hello and good bye in Japanese. It was fun, sitting in that coffee shop, waiting for Mori, talking and laughing. It felt natural, comfortable. It felt about a thousand times better than any of the times I have ever been in Hiroshima with groups of loud and poorly-dressed English teachers. While it made me sad to be leaving, it also made me happy to be able to be there, doing new things and having new experiences so close to my departure.

Fumiko.

Mori showed up.

That was about it. I don't remember what we did after that, some shopping here and there, and then it was time for dinner. We picked up Mori's friend Tsukasa and went to a sushi place.

A conveyor belt sushi place.

I've been to a lot of conveyor belt sushis before, but this one was by far and away the best. The stuff was far and away the best sushi I have ever had. Horse, abalone, otoro (fatty tuna stomach), sea urchin, and all manner of fish - and every bite delicious.

Tell me if that does not look like the single most delicious piece of unagi sushi you have ever seen.

The line of customers, all looking to see what comes down the line. Conveyor belt sushi is like getting your luggage off the baggage claim at an airport, except no one owns any of the luggage until it comes off the belt, and everyone tries to take the best looking suitcase.

That night, Mori and I stayed with Tsukasa, who is a carpenter in Hiroshima. We stayed up and listened to new music on Mori's computer.

Mori and Tsukasa.

Tsukasa had work at around 5:30 in the morning, so he headed out and Mori and I slept until about 8:30. Then we had that morning when you wake up in a house that is not yours, you haven't slept well, and you just feel like your body is not quite with your mind just yet.

Walking out was kind of surprise. We had arrived at night, so I hadn't seen the outside before.

That is not what I am used to in the morning. Nice - but not what I am used to.

And that was about it. I met up with Graham on Saturday and we did some shopping for things. When I am doing things other than sightseeing in Hiroshima, I don't take any pictures. I took maybe five all day, and nothing terribly fantastic. Come about 4:00, we headed home.

We stopped at a 7-11 in Akitsu to get some dinner, and also because Mori wanted to show me a really great spot for skateboarding. I obviously took a picture, which came out nicely.

And then that was really it for my time in Hiroshima.

My remen (pronounced "lay-men") dinner - so delicious, especially in summer.

And Mori set out to take some pictures with my camera. He succeeded in taking a perfect ending shot for this post.

On Wednesday, I am moving my computer downstairs because Dave is arriving from Tokyo, completing the set of new teachers. I will make a valiant effort to update, but you know how these things go.

Sinking Boats and New Teachers

2006-08-03T00:50:00.000+09:00

A quick update tonight, as I have been busy all day. Perhaps you remember a while ago, when I went to Kui. On my way to Kui, I saw a funny boat and took a picture of it. A few days ago, I was at one of the schools I taught at, cleaning out my desk and making sure everything was ready for the next teachers. I saw a copy of the Chugoku Shimbun (The Central Japan Newspaper) and a picture on the front page caught my eye. I opened it up, and thought to myself "wow, a boat that looks just like the one I saw flipped over!

Then I looked closer.

It is the same boat! The Cougar Ace, from Singapore, that left Hiroshima and crossed paths with the ferry I was on had some sort of major malfunction at sea and heeled over 60 degrees to port off the coast of Alaska. Ironically enough, it is not sinking, just floating along on its side. 4,700 new Mazdas are stuck inside.

First, what are the odds of that happening. Second, what are the odds of that happening to a ship I saw passing Osakikamijima a week earlier? Third, what are the odds that having flipped over, the boat would be photographed, put on the front page of the newspaper here, and I would happen to come in to school and see a two-day-old newspaper with this picture on the cover? I would bet extremely low. The strange part is that this story came a so close to passing by without me even noticing. I wonder how many things have passed by me like that, interesting things that I just missed by chance or circumstance.

This does raise an interesting point. It was a beautiful day and I was taking a lot of pictures, and I took three pictures of the Cougar Ace - I have no way of knowing this for sure, but these may be the last pictures taken of the Cougar Ace before it flipped.

I should find the Captain and mail this picture to him.

Other newsflashes from the front:

1. I have just about finished packing and mailing stuff home, the total bill for sending my stuff home by mail is working out to about $700. That is a lot of money. I am sending stuff in Osaki Mikan (tangerine) boxes. I will have a nice collection of awesome boxes when I get home, and also an excellent cat. Here is a picture of those things together:

2. And the big news, today we can say hello to Graham Ruddle, who landed in Hiroshima at half past one today, and has filled the spot that Megan left vacant six months ago. He's on the island, living downstairs, and ladies...

...he is a handsome man. A JET who shall remain nameless told me she regretted deciding to go home, because she would have rather stayed and gotten to know Graham. Her words, not mine.

We did a tour of the island, got some groceries, and then went to the beach to put our toes in the inland sea. After standing there for a few minutes, Graham said "could you do me a favor? Could you take a picture of me here on my first day so I can put it on my blog?"

I'll put it on my blog too. Seems that after all he's my kind of guy.

I'm going to be in Hiroshima, possibly sleeping in a car Friday night, so expect the next blog to be on Saturday.

A Car and A Halfpipe

2006-08-01T01:17:00.000+09:00

Time is running out. Just like that a weekend slipped by, day turned to night and then to day again, and I was one day closer to leaving. I have fifteen days left here, barely two weeks, and as I mail things home and get ready for new arrivals - it begins to dawn on me that things here are almost over, that I should start saying goodbyes and going to all my favorite places one last time. It's a strange feeling, and one that I don't particularly care to dwell on right now.

A couple weeks ago, a girl I met found out I had studied art and graphic design at school, and immediately asked me if I wanted to "make design" for a bread delivery van. My rule of thumb here has been "Never say no unless you have already planned something" - so I said yes of course, I'd be happy to. For about three days I forgot about it, and then one day Mori called me and said "my sister says 'hurry up with the design.'" Mori's sister works at the same place as the design requesting girl, and suddenly I went from no deadline to pushy clients contacting me to ask where the design was. I got to work on some ideas, and with a little advice from Mori, we hatched a plan to paint the car. Supplies were bought, sketches made, and last Saturday we got to work on the car.

Getting started. Mori and his sister, Hiroko, after we set the car up for painting.

We ended up doing the whole thing with tape stencils and spray paint. I'll let you be the judge of how it came out in the end. After the sunburn I got the day before diving, I was not taking any chances - straw hat for me.

It was unbelievably hot, but at least we had some shade.

While I did the front, Mori did the moji - writing - for the side.

In the Nakamura household it was time to put the futons out in the sun to air - and of course the dog comes too. Thank you to Hiroko for taking this picture, and most of the others for this day.

The bread, almost done. They had asked me for an image evocative of islands and bread, so I gave them that pretty literally.

And then it was done. Hiroko and I stood back from it and were sort of at a loss for words. We couldn't decide if it was cute, funny, or silly, bad or good, ugly or nice, it was just done. Mori's mother stepped out of the fish shop and said "wow, that bread is flying!" And so it was. Ladies and gentlemen, I have painted giant flying bread on the hood of a new Suzuki van.

Mori didn't' finish that night, so I have yet to see the finished writing.
I'll post a picture when I do.

The second half of the weekend was more photogenic. On Sunday Mori and The Circus were planning to officially open the new half pipe with a barbeque, skating, and hanging out. As an honorary Circus member, I was invited along. It was a beautiful day, blue skies, hot and sunny, with the cicadas in the background and music playing. I sat on a beach chair and had some barbeque.

Japanese Barbequeues - not exactly like the ones back home. I told Mori that we usually make hot dogs and hamburgers and he didn't believe me. One of his friends said "No no, it's true, I saw it on TV! They even grill bread!" - and then no one believed that. I had my strips of pork, grilled cabbage, and grilled noodles and enjoyed the barbeque, Japanese style.

Of course this party was to celebrate the opening of the new ramp, so there was a lot of skating, and quite a bit of falling, as everyone was on their sixth or seventh beer.

Only Mori can pull off skateboarding on a half pipe in old sandals, and a straw hat while smoking a cigarette and wearing my sunglasses.

I really like this picture. Is that vain? I like a few pictures in this series, so there.

Takenobu.

Mori was at my house tonight and we were looking at these pictures. When this one came up, he said "Recently, Takenobu has been looking so cool." I said just wait until you see the next one.

Takenobu took a pretty big spill right in front of me, and when I was looking at the photos that night, I realized that I had gotten the picture right at the instant the he clenched every muscle in his body to brace for impact - and as a result he looks incredibly buff here. This is not what he usually looks like. Mori saw this picture and couldn't stop laughing.

I'm going to finish off with my three favorite pictures from the day. I could point out what I like about each one, but I hope you'll be able to see why I like these without my help.

So Wednesday is the next blog, but Wednesday is also the day that the first new teacher arrives. We'll see, maybe a little update.

The Things I Do To Avoid Packing

2006-07-28T22:58:00.000+09:00

The list of things mentioned in the title is lengthy indeed. For example, I wrote that title nearly an hour ago, and have since ordered parts for a computer, talked to my father on the phone, stared intently at my cat, eaten some canned peaches, and watched a lizard climb on my screen. The boxes may not all be packed tonight.

So, another short update tonight - While I have been busy, I haven't been taking that many pictures, and I have been spending a good deal of time underwater, and my camera doesn't follow me there. Anyway, yesterday.

A praying mantis on my drying pants.

I spent yesterday sitting around my house, packing a little, watching some movies and TV shows, and generally making a mess of things. There are boxes all over and that makes Neko happy - she's a fiend for boxes, loves sitting in them, sleeping in them, jumping in and out of them - she's sleeping in a big half-packed box now. Either way, yesterday I did a little Neko-in-a-box photo shoot, and here are the results.

At around 4:30, Mori called me and asked me if I wanted to go diving again. I grabbed camera, fins, mask, and headed to the boat, and we went out again. It was a lot better the second time, at 15 feet it was a bit shallower than last time, and there were corals, brightly colored fish, anemones that would suck back into a little tube when you brushed them, bright orange starfish moving around quickly, and all manner of other beautiful sea life. In all this I still failed to find any sazae - the big snails. Mori got out before I did, and he grabbed my camera and took pictures of me diving - unfortunately I had left my memory card back home, so the pictures were not recorded, and I am not preserved for all time in my diving glory.

That night was a goodbye party for me thrown by my English Conversation Class students. We had some nice conversations, and I explained the difference between "hot""cute" and "cool." For a while we discussed whether or not sashimi is cruel, as this fish came out with it's organs removed, its meat sliced into beautiful pieces, and it's mouth and fins still spasmodically moving a bit.

I don't think it's cruel - I think it's awesome.

Kind of a random picture - under the party tables - I realized in the third hour of the party that I have become totally comfortable sitting cross-legged on tatami now, not something I could say a year ago.

So today was another day that was supposed to be all packing, but ended up being mostly procrastination, along with some diving. Today Mori and I went out earlier than before, and tried three spots.

What a hunk.

The first spot was right next to the harbor. We dropped the anchor right next to the giant concrete walls and dove straight down about 12 feet, looking in the cracks between the giant boulders that the walls are seated in. I didn't take any pictures because I was too busy in the water. Mori found one sazae, and rather than grab it he called me over and we went down together so I could see where it was and grab it. Technically my first, but it didn't really count. There was no current near the walls, so as soon as we started diving down and kicking up silt, visibility at the bottom dropped to about five feet. You would dive down in pale green water, and while kicking down the light would become yellow, then almost amber. Down on the bottom felt like a dream, silent and hazy, with soft yellow light everywhere. Pulling myself over rocks, peeking into deep cracks, I finally found a sazae on my own. I had already been down a while, I was swallowing to suppress my need for air, but as soon as I saw my quarry, those concerns were forgotten. I grabbed it, yanked it off the rock, and went swimming up, shell held triumphantly above my head. There was much shouting and much high fiving between divers, and then it was back down to get more. Except I didn't get any more all day. Still, one is better than zero, and next time I will get more. For now I need a little vacation though, my ears were ringing from the constant shifts in pressure, my knuckles and stomach are cut up, and my head feels a bit waterlogged.

Sazae - they look like rocks! My knuckles are cut up because I forgot my gloves on one dive - the boat's anchor was fouled on something no matter how we hauled we couldn't get it up, so I got back in, grabbed the anchor rope, and hauled myself down. A pretty good ways down, I saw that the anchor was stuck under a big rock, so I put my feet on the sea floor, grabbed the anchor with both hands, and worked it out - once I got it free, I was completely out of air, but I made it up and we were on our way, with some bloody knuckles.

There's some stuff on the books for this weekend, so I should have material for Monday. Just a few more posts left until I go home!

A Short Interlude

2006-07-27T00:59:00.000+09:00

I have finally started putting things in boxes, it is about 1 AM now, and there is an enormous mess in my room. I think it actually makes Neko nervous, because instead of being curled up at my feet, she is out in the kitchen. I have to clean.

I wasn't planning on writing today, I hadn't done much and packing was looming large on my mind, but I talked to two people, and thanks to them, the blog is going on. So thank you to Brendon and Sara's mysterious English flatmate (scratch that. Friend) - if it weren't for you two, this update would not exist.

First, a random picture from yesterday.

It's been cloudy and rainy every day for the last week - I suppose that's part of the reason that I haven't been taking many pictures. Either way, the sun peeked out for a moment yesterday while I was hanging out at the new half pipe yesterday so I took this picture. That's about all the story that goes with it.

And that brings us to today. Suddenly it was boiling hot and humid again, and I spent most of the day buying boxes, cleaning, and getting ready to pack. At about 5:00 I was going to the store and figured I would stop and see what Mori was up to. He was just finishing cleaning his boat, and he proposed that we go diving for shellfish. I had my mask and flippers mailed to me expressly for this, so I cancelled my plans to go to the store, and we got ready to go.

My scooter, equipped for diving.

Our boat.

We stopped to pick up Takenobu, Mori's friend who works at the factory island. He had just gotten off work, and he wanted to come along. His birthday was last weekend, so Mori got him an excellent birthday present.

I kind of think this picture is amazing.

And this is where we were diving.

Arriving. Takenobu with present in hand.

Yes! The current was so strong that we actually had to pick up the anchor and go get him when it was time to go back.

So the diving. We were diving for these big snails, maybe seven inches in diameter, that hang on to the bottom and sides of big rocks. The current was pretty brisk, and the visibility in the water was probably two meters. Frankly, I didn't have the chops for it. First, you had to swim pretty hard to get lined up over a big rock outcrop. Once you found it, you did a dive and swam down probably 20 feet. It was far enough that if you didn't equalize your ears on the way down, you were in too much pain at the bottom to concentrate. Once you reach the bottom, you grab onto a rock to prevent being swept away, and then there - ears pounding, lungs screaming for air, work gloves barely protecting you from sea urchins and whatnot - you pull yourself over and around the rocks looking for these snails. Mori got three in a half hour, I got a rock and a sinker that somebody lost. I refuse to accept defeat, we're going back out soon - to an easier spot, says Mori.

It was fun and exciting, and really hard! I am looking forward to going again. Next time I'll get five.

Coming home, Takenobu was pretty excellent, so here is a little photo shoot to end it off. I hope I have something to show on Friday.

Today I have officially been here exactly one year. Wow.

I Should Be Packing

2006-07-24T09:26:00.000+09:00

I will try to avoid sentimentality as I write, sitting at the Board of Ed on my second to last day of work. I actually don't have much to write here, so I will post some pictures and see what happens.

First up is my going away party, thrown by Higashino Junior High. We had a reservation at the Seifukan beer garden, attached to the island's one big hotel. I had never been to the hotel before, and it was decidedly surreal. A giant lobby is staffed by people in tuxedos, it has its own gift shop, bus service, and restaurant. It is visited mostly by big groups of businessmen who arrive in giant coach buses and are taken directly to the hotel, which they never venture out of. Kind of depressing, actually. Either way we had our party at the beer garden.

By "beer garden" they mean "table on a patch of grass with a keg on a cart and a nice view." It was incredibly windy at first, but then it calmed down. The beer garden was kind of ridiculously situated, because just to the left was the men's onsen, so during the meal we kept seeing naked men getting in and out of their hot spring bath. They were behind a little hedge, but not much was hidden. Lovely.

The assistant principal. We were talking about Japanese warplanes and ships, and he told me that his father was an engineer for Zero fighters. Not only that, but he was an engineer on an aircraft carrier, and he prepped planes and worked on them at Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, his father's ship fought at Midway, where five Japanese carriers were sunk. Two escaped, one of which was his father's ship. They escaped by steaming into a squall, and then staying under the heaviest part of the storm, following the clouds until they had escaped the American dive bombers that had so thoroughly defeated the Japanese torpedo planes.

Questions for me during the evening included: "Don't you think America is selfish, trying to force 'freedom' on everyone?" "What gives America the right to be a world police force?" "Why did America drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima?" After dealing with these questions in a pleasant and hopefully informative way, I feel like I am prepared for any job interview I could ever face. The questions sound nasty and mean when written out, but in person they were honest and curious, and they just wanted to know how I saw these things.

After the first part, a second party of course. We went to Yoisa, the bar that Mori and his friends frequent.

It was funny, seeing my co-workers sleeping in front of the walls that Mori and his friends painted.

The next day was the first summer festival of the year, in Kinoe. Kinoe is the oldest town on the island, and also the sleepiest. It stretches along the water, jammed between mountains and sea, a line of houses snaking along the coast. I don't have much business in Kinoe, but my schools are around it and going from one to the other I pass through it very often. Kinoe is a sleepy town, you can usually pass from one end to the other seeing only a couple cars and maybe an old woman pushing a cart. The shops all look closed and the houses seem to lean on each other for support. I took the scooter over on Saturday morning to see the preparations for the festival, and it was wonderful.

It was like the town had come alive. It wasn't bustling and crazy, but there were people out in the streets. Parents and children were stringing paper lanterns up along the roads, men were hoisting banners, flags, and bigger lanterns over the streets. Old folks sat in the shade, watching everyone go by. I don't think I have ever said more konnichiwas in my life, nor have I ever felt more comfortable or happier greeting groups of old Japanese people who - as I approached them - stared at me as though I was some sort of rare wild animal. As I walked off, I inevitably heard someone informing the rest of the group as to my name, where I was from, and what I was doing on their island.

Last year, the prospect of walking down this street alone would have been terrifying. This year it was the best part of my day.

Downtown Kinoe. I'm not joking. It's one road, and there you can see the buildings on either side of it. Something about this picture looks old to me.

My favorite spot in Kinoe. This ancient little harbor is dry at low tide and full at high. To my right is a big old hotel.

On Kinoe's main street.

Side streets. I love side streets.

In an open door in Kinoe. I have taken long road trips to see houses like this one.

At one point I passed a spot where the road I was on split off, the bigger road I was on going straight, and the smaller one angling off to the left, and then continuing parallel to the road I was on. You see that a lot here, the old main road being bypassed by a little bit by a bigger road better able to handle two lanes of faster traffic. I had never been on the old road before, and so obviously, I started down it. I didn't get far before I realized it was completely wonderful, so I parked my scooter and got off and walked.

Some of these alleys were just barely wide enough to fit through.

Some of them had shrines.

I don't know if this shop was open anymore, but they had a huge amount of beautiful onions hanging on the second floor.

So that was wonderful, feeling Kinoe alive again, festivals and decorations around some beautiful old and sagging buildings. I went home as the weather turned grey, and then that night I played volleyball. After volleyball I ran home, grabbed my tripod (the worst tripod ever made) and my camera, and jumped on my scooter and went back to Kinoe at unsafe speeds. I got there right at the end of the big fireworks show, the booms and flashes echoing across the island as I went zipping along the empty roads. I got into town for the last ten minutes of the show, and managed to take all of about two pictures before the show ended. Here is one.

I parked my scooter and got my camera and walked down to the water. The entirety of Kinoe was out, strolling, talking, laughing, and just enjoying being out, together, as a town. I waved hello to elemetary schoolers, some of them dragging me by the hand to meet their parents. My middle school girls, forever stuck in the too-big white blouse and knee-length navy skirt at school were all out in their summer kimonos, beautiful brilliant fabric and hair all done up. The guys were all wearing their coolest clothes, pretending they weren't too shy to talk to the girls. Everyone was happy, watching the men row long wood boats, eating fried octopus balls, and suddenly I got what summer festivals were all about.

Last year, just after I arrived, I went to a few summer festivals with Cory and Megan. At the time, I thought they were nice, the fireworks were always impressive and loud, and everyone seemed to be having fun, but I didn't really get the appeal. The fried octopus balls were not my favorite, the festivals seemed short and kind of chaotic, and without any great appeal that I could see. Last weekend in Kinoe was different, and I finally understood.

The festival is familiar. It happens the same way every year, but it's not about the events, or the food, or any of that - it's about the town being together. Everyone is out, walking the beautiful old streets, faces lit by paper lanterns, the shouts of sake-fueled boat racers floating across the water. The girls get a chance to really dress up and go out with their friends. The parents walk together, or just stand and watch the boats, the lights reflecting on the water, the dark mountiains rising up into the night behind the town. In a town where the last bar closed years ago, the population is slowly dwindling, and the biggest shipyard in the middle of town rusts away abandoned, on that night it was vibrant with life and community. Everyone together, living and existing in this tiny beautiful place, enjoying a summer night together.

Of course, pictures can't hope to capture any of that - but here are a few.

Those are the boats that were sitting on the mud earlier that day.

Some middle schoolers of mine. Actually, not any more, I guess.

Kinoe town shrine, all lit up and smoky with incense.

Inside the shrine, the mikoshi - like the one I carried last year.

After the shrine I lost a good 20 minutes because I lost my camera bag somewhere in the festival. I went walking up and down the streets, trying to remember where I had left it, and as I was looking, the festival ended. I found the case near the shrine, placed on top of a bush, but the festival was over. The town may well have been more beautiful after everyone left, quiet and peaceful, but with the decorations and memories of the festival still lingering.

Four girls walking home.

By now it was so quiet that I could hear someone walking towards me while they were still three or four blocks away.

And then, as I set up this picture the lights went off, the night got deeper and softer, and I took this picture and went home.

School's Out.

2006-07-21T13:46:00.000+09:00

The last real day of work is behind me. Seven goodbye ceremonies, seven speeches in English and Japanese, seven big groups of kids all waving and shouting good bye - all done and dusted. Finishing now, getting ready to go home, it feels like I made the right decision to not re-contract. I am heartbroken to leave, but I feel ready. The kids are on summer break, it's warm and green here, I spend my afternoons taking pictures and enjoying life, and I can't think of a more wonderful way to end.

Speaking of taking pictures, I haven't taken many recently - a few here, a few there, but my 50 a day average is taking a hit. I would have loved to take pictures of the kids all sitting in rows listening to me talk, but I think it might not have fit in with the mood of the speeches. The schools I went to in the latter half of this week are schools that I love and have very heavily photographed, so I felt like trying to take pictures of everyone on the grey cloudy last days would do them a disservice. I always immediately know when I have missed good photos by not bringing my camera, but after my last days, I didn't feel like I had missed anything.

What that means blog-wise is that these are the last pictures on my camera. There are only eight pictures here, and then it's up to me to take pictures that I like over the weekend. I have a faculty goodbye party, possibly spray painting a van, and who knows what else, so I would guess that I'll come up with something.

Recently, Mori and the skating crew built a new halfpipe. It was an epic task, taking many months and costing many thousands of dollars, mostly in lumber. Last week they finished it, and before cleaning anything up, before putting away their tools, they had to try it out.

That is a pretty sweet ramp. It gets excellent reviews from everyone who skates on it.

It's going to get a grafitti mural or two on it soon, but for now you can appreciate the beautifully installed plywood.

Last weekend, I met a family of foreigners on the island. It was a long weekend and they were vacationing here, it was a long story but they were brother and sister by different mothers, and her mother lives on the island. We arranged to meet up and have dinner, after which I drove the brother up to the top of the mountain to see the view. It was about 7:30, so it was getting dark, but it was still lovely up there.

For the longest time I have been planning a photo trip around the island at night or late dusk. I generally shoot handheld, whatever grabs my eye, and these last pictures are about the limit of my hand's steadiness. I can do an exposure for a second or two, if I'm braced on something and breathing slowly, but beyond that I'd need a tripod, so shooting at night necessitates planning. Maybe this weekend.

The very next day, Liz came for a visit and we managed to score a totally rainy and miserable day. Video games were played and we went out for some drives, and since Liz has never managed to see the view from the top of the mountain, we thought we'd have a go at that. The top of the mountain was beautiful from my house, with clouds creeping up on it and blowing around. I though were were going to have another amazing view, but by the time we reached the top, the creeping clouds had covered the top, and we found the view erased. This is the second time this has happened.

While I didn't take many pictures last week during the goodbyes, I did take a couple, and I liked this one as a last memory of Kinoe Junior High.

The End of the Beginning of the End

2006-07-19T22:13:00.001+09:00

As it is wont to do, time marches onward. 30 days until departure have become 27, and those three days slipped through my fingers like so much fine sand. I went to work, I said some goodbyes, but I feel like I should be having a party every day, celebrating the things I love about Japan, running all over the island, but instead it has been rainy, I have done some laundry, cooked dinner, lounged around with my cat, and tried to make arrangements to mail stuff home. I have just one more day of school, and maybe then the parties will start. For now, sitting at home, listening to the Goldberg Variations mixed with the sound of rain outside, smelling the sea and the warm straw smell of my tatami mats, and writing - I can think of worse ways to spend an evening.

Swimming

Some time last week, maybe Thursday afternoon, I got home and instead of going back to my apartment I kept scootering right out to where Mori skates. When I got there, I found a group of my junior high school students, but no Mori. I asked the kids where he was and they told me he had just gone out swimming. I looked out onto the water and saw a tiny boat with four or five people in it heading out, and I wasted no time in calling Mori and telling him to come back, because I wanted to go swimming too. I was changed and back at the dock before he even got in, and so I jumped into the boat and we headed back out.

We got to a spot where Mori decided it was good for swimming, and he dropped the anchor. Everyone dove in, and it was wonderful. I don't have any pictures of that, obviously, but it was delightful - the water was cool, but the air was hot and the sun was shining. We swam around for a bit, jumped off the boat, and then headed back in.

Hosing off and drying off in front of Fishing Nakamura - Mori's family fish store.

At some point I started pushing a wheelbarrow around - it seemed like a good idea at the time.

After swimming Mori had to go fishing, so I headed home. It was too nice out to just sit around, so I went out to try and catch the sunset on my scooter.

This is one of my favorite spots on the road out of Osaki, and two of my students were crossing the street after catching bugs.

I headed up the mountain and stopped for a remarkably beautiful view. As I looked at it through the viewfinder, I realized I had taken this exact picture before, almost a full year ago. It's good to see that if anything, it has only gotten better with time.

As I kept stopping to take pictures on the way, about halfway up I realized the sun was going to set before I even got to the top. I got on the scooter and proceeded to recklessly head up. I was riding with my sunglasses on, and there are a few spots where you pass through thick bamboo forests, and it was just pitch black to me. I kept going towards the light at the end, hoping there weren't and new giant potholes in the way. I got to the top and practically kicked the back wheel into the air stopping, and ran up to the observation deck. My efforts were rewarded.

So this picture. I went around the side of the mountain to get a better view of the sunset, except that you'll notice that the sun has already set. That is because the trail that is usually clear was essentially undistinguishable from the rest of the mountainside, except that under the four feet of underbrush, there were steep wooden steps. I half fell down these steps, holding my camera up above the bushes, and then missed my turn onto the loose gravel slope that is so good for watching the sunset. I missed the turn, because the turn had washed away in the recent rains, so I tried to climb over and nearly ended up falling down the mountain. I slid quite a ways on my ass, then had to climb back up, grabbing onto trees and such to haul myself up, and finally - covered in cuts and scratches - I took this picture.

Heading back down was less eventful, I didn't even die once. Coming back to the water, I saw something I had never seen before. The clouds and sun, long below the horizon, were casting shadows up into the night sky. It was hard to photograph but really cool to see.

I sat and watched boats come in while a lightning storm flickered in that big cloud on the right.

Last Day at Higashino

So another day, another farewell to a school packed with cute kids. I am running low on time, so I am not going to write much. Higashino was one of my least favorite schools all year, but on the last day the kids were great, the lessons went well, and I got some nice pictures.

The group pictures are usually not my favorite, but sometimes they just come out perfectly. I think this is one of those cases.

Some of my kids:

Maho - she wins the "cutest kid at Higashino prize"

Maho again.

And that was about it. We said our goodbyes, I gave a little speech in Japanese, and then I headed home as everyone came out to wave goodbye.

A Trip to Kui-cho

So last thing before I crash. Higashino was Friday, that night I went to Kui to visit Theresa - Theresa is a JET from Philly who is in a little mountain town near Mihara called Kui. We got dinner in Fukuyama, and then headed back to Kui as there was no ferry back to the island at night.

By the ferry port - a family of work boats. There was an even bigger one on the left.

To get to Mihara, one can take the Shinkansen of ferries - the Hayabusa fast ferry. This thing is awesome, and big! It carries up to 100 people at 32 knots, using two big engines and thrusters in the front. Sitting in the seat as it accelerates, you are pressed into your seat, a little bit like an airplane taking off.

Pictures from the ferry:

That is a funny looking boat. From my time on the Maritime college boat, and the lectures they gave, I know it is a car transport, carrying 5,000 Japanese cars to parts unknown. Mazda has their main factory in Hiroshima, so that's probably what this is.

In case anyone had forgotten, I live in a tropical island paradise... for 27 more days.

We passed awfully close to the Koyo shipyards. Giant cranes and giant tools making giant ships.

One of the half-finished giant ships. They were making five ships, all for MOL - you can see another one on the right.

After a lovely dinner and a lovely night of sleep in Theresa's impressively air-conditioned apartment, we had a day to kill and see Kui. Kui is a tiny town (about 5,000 people) stuck up in between some mountains. It's a little town in Hiroshima-ken, much like Osaki, but the feeling is very different since it's on the mainland. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but it just feels different. More space, more fields, longer and straighter roads - it feels more rural. Also, you could potentially get lost on the roads - a new experience for me, hemmed in as I am by water. Theresa and I did our best to get lost, and saw some cool things in the process.

Two temples around Kui. The first is in the town, the other is about five minutes out.

What's wild about this to me is that these aren't destinations. Nobody knows about these places other than the people who live around them, but they are beautiful and old and right in the middle of some really beautiful scenery.

The entrance.

Looking back in.

We don't quite have vistas like this on the island.

And that was my trip. Heading back through Mihara, I passed this restaurant that I had seen before, and every time I see it I think it looks very American. What do you think?

The First Last Day of School

2006-07-17T22:56:00.000+09:00

Just yesterday it was exactly one month until I go home, and I am having trouble wrapping my mind around that. I'm sitting in my room now, my cat is hanging out around my feet, Mori just went home after stopping by to visit, I have school tomorrow, and it definitely doesn't feel like in 30 days I'll be in Brooklyn, New York, USA.

Things are starting to wind down (or wind up, depending on how you look at it) - last week I had my first last day of school, at Nakano Elementary school. I taught six mini-classes, got lots of hugs from the first and second graders, signed autographs for a lot of kids, and then had my last school lunch there. As I was gathering my stuff in the teacher's room, an announcement went out over the loudspeaker, and since I wasn't listening I just caught my name at the end of it. Suddenly all the kids came running to the windows of their classrooms and started waving and shouting goodbyes. It was wonderful and I stayed there waving to them until they had to make another announcement saying "ok, ok, thank you. Now eat your lunches."

Boat Adventures

So, Tuesday was my last day at Nakano, and on (brutally hot) Wednesday, I was at Osaki Junior High for my second to last day. In the morning we taught two (sweaty, lethargic) classes, and then in the afternoon I was informed that the students had an event at the Maritime College, and I was invited. The event could have been burning American flags for all I cared, as long as it meant I didn't have to stand in that stifling English classroom and melt.

The entire school formed a long line of bicycles, 100 kids long. I went back and forth along the line on my scooter, stopping to take pictures here and there.

A lot of lines.

We arrived at Shosen (the maritime college) and it turned out that there was no flag burning, only a trip on the Hiroshima Maru - the big ship that docks by the school, goes out on short learning trips, and once a year takes the graduating class around the world.

This was actually pretty lucky for me. The junior high kids only get invited for a ride on the ship once every three years, and seeing as I go to Osaki for a day and a half every two weeks, for a total period of about ten months - the odds were not on my side. The trip is a field trip for the kids, but for Shosen, it's a recruiting event too. They want students from the island, and the earlier they can plant the maritime seed, the better.

Everyone donned life vests and practiced abandoning ship, except they only jumped forward about six inches, and not off the deck of a sinking ship.

So we're going along, and after heading out from the pier, the ship starts picking up speed and pretty soon we're cruising along. I don't know exactly how fast, but it wasn't slow. I'm wandering around the deck, and off in the distance I notice a couple of coast guard boats sitting out in the water. As I watch, they both gun their engines and start turning towards us. I wonder what it is they want from us, and then I notice a third speck, moving faster, and not in the water. Then I realized we are being followed by two coast guard boats and a helicopter!

Not something you see every day.

They pulled up along side us, and then pulled a giant hard left in formation.

The boats settled along side us, but the helicopter wasn't done. He did a couple low slow passes, one on each side, then circled the ship sideways, and then went off ahead of the ship, turned around, and made a high speed pass maybe 50 feet above the water.

After one last pass next to the boat with everyone in the chopper waving goodbye, the helicopter and one of the boats headed off.

One stayed with us as an escort for the next two hours.

After that excitement, I was ready to sign up as a student. Four years of helicopters and ships? Yes please. For the next couple hours the ship was open to everyone, kids were crawling all over the decks and the bridge, and having a grand old time steering the boat, operating the radar, or just taking in the view.

Also, some lectures about how great being a student at Shosen is.

Kinoe Junior High, my school with the incredible view - it looks pretty good from this side too.

Here you can see the bow wave - we were going fast! You can also see how calm it is here in the summer. Never windy, always humid, always hot.

And that was our trip. The ropes were tied off at 4:30 and I wasted no time in getting home.

Nishino - Second to Last Day

Not so much a heartbreaking milestone as a good opportunity to photograph the kids, last Thursday morning was my second to last day at Nishino Elementary, the school that has hosted both my family and Gabe, whose teachers bend over backwards for me, and whose kids are cuter than you could possibly imagine. I brought my camera to lunch and took a bunch of pictures.

Hatsune - at this point she needs not introduction. She is wearing the outfit that all the kids have to wear while they prepare lunch.

There is something adorable about this picture - with the towel under her chin, and her hands just resting on the surface of the water - clearly she is doing something important.

The volatile Kodai.

At the end of lunch, Hatsune and her friend suddenly stopped smiling and making silly faces for me and struck perfect bored-with-life-hipster poses. Awesome.

Back on Wednesday with hot boys in their underwear, dangerous sunsets, and another tragic last day.

Back to the (Amazing) Daily Grind

2006-07-14T14:41:00.000+09:00

So, with Gabe on his way to America, I headed back to the island to start working and living my life again. The narrative for this post is pretty loose (read: this is just a bunch of random pictures), but I would say that a loose random narrative pretty much sums up my life these days. There are certainly worse things than being at loose ends after work, going around and seeing wonderful things, doing things with friends, and taking pictures. In fact just the other day I was out on my scooter after work, tearing around some tiny switchback on the side of some mountain, and I thought "If I could stay here and not have to work, and it could be summer all the time, I would never leave." Immediately after I had that thought, I figured most people would stay any place in the world if they never had to work and it was summer all the time, but still. It's sublime here after work.

Those of you who knew me before I went to Japan know I had a thing for abandoned houses. Abandoned houses are funny in Japan, because they are all locked up and in spotless condition. The only way you can tell they are abandoned is that the mailboxes are full of old notices, and the grass is not mowed. There is no creeping into abandoned homes, finding little bits of detritus and old forgotten things here, at least not that I have found. I did find one falling-down building the other day, but there were footprints in the mud that weren't mine, so who knows what goes on here.

On Tuesday of last week, after school I was driving home and I passed a little old harbor I always admire as I pass, but had never photographed. As I'm down into the last month before I go home, I have gotten into this mindset where I look at something and ask myself if I have satisfactorily photographed it or not. If the answer is no, I pull over and have another go at it. Here is my first shot at the little stone harbor in Kinoe.

Let's just take a moment to acknowledge the fact that that tiny road along the right is my commute to work. I'm so spoiled for roads and driving.

I don't think anyone uses this harbor any more.

The other recent development has been fishing, namely doing a lot of it. I asked Mori to teach me to do the net fishing he does every day, so that meant going out one afternoon and then again at 7:00 the next morning. I don't have many pictures because I was hauling nets into the water the first time, and then blearily hauling fish out of the water the next morning, decked out in full waterproof clothes and white rubber boots.

After dropping the nets.

The next day Mori and his father pulled the big new boat out of the water to clean it, and Mori supervised the tracks that the boat went onto, Mori's father drove the boat, and I handled the gigantic winch with the most awesome control box ever.

I am realizing this is all one day. First the net, then we pulled the boat out, and then Kawamoto-san took me (and friends) out for dinner as a thank you for making some nice prints of pictures I took of his kids. Dinner was yakiniku (grilled meat) which is super-popular Japanese food here, and I have never seen back home. I will have to open a yakiniku shop.

One of the kids I photographed. This is me photographing him again.

After Yakiniku, there was bars and karaoke, and after that, there was sitting out in the road.

As soon as I go out with Mori and co, the pictures become blurry. It's practically a rule.

The next day Theresa visited from Kui. We drove around tiny roads, but we didn't do much because I was a little bit wrecked by drinking and karaoke, followed by hauling nets and getting stung by stingrays. As of now, I hate sting rays.

A temple back in the hills.

I think Neko and I felt about the same way that day.

Finally, a preview of the epic that begins next week - last days at school, lots of pictures of cute kids, with the occasional side adventures of being chased by a helicopter, driving a giant boat really fast, and nearly killing myself for a sunset.

Hatsune on my second to last day at Nishino elementary, photogenic as ever.

I'm not sure if I'll update on Monday, as it's a national holiday in Japan (Ocean day).

Kyoto With a Guest

2006-07-12T23:32:00.000+09:00

Here is a test: Can I write a full-length blog post in under an hour? It's 11:30 now, I usually try to be asleep by now, but it's Wednesday, and I have responsibilities. At 12:30 I draw the line, so here goes nothing.

Last we spoke, Gabe and I had headed out from Osakikamijima, on our way to Kyoto. We caught a the train and got in at the tail end of the day. We got a bus to the only guest house that still had rooms in all of the city, and checked in.

The famous (infamous?) Uno House was a pretty intense place to land after hauling bags through the hot Kyoto afternoon. An extremely tan American woman with a smoker's voice and perfect Japanese was having an animated conversation with the harried looking lady sitting where I guessed the reception desk was. A little boy who seemed to be her son was running around half naked and cigarette smoke poured from a kitchen just around the corner. Every inch of every wall was covered in handwritten signs instructing you on what you could and couldn't do, and rather than floors and hallways, narrow snaking pathways wound around, carpeted and about six inches above moldy damp concrete. Walking through the kitchen someone asked me if I had a dog with me, the little boy stood in our way and shouted for his mother, who ignored him, and then we were through. The woman (who turned out to be Mrs. Uno) walked us along a progressively narrower hallway until she came to our room which had no air conditioning, no window, terrifying wallpaper, and a rusty wall fan.

Looking back towards the kitchen.

To our room.

Our excellent room. At 2,000 yen a night, we were getting what we paid for. (2,000 yen is about 18 dollars, if you're too lazy to look it up.)

It's the details and the decor that really make it.

So, once we had come to terms with the Uno House, we decided it would be best to head out a bit and see what the neighborhood was all about. All the temples and sites of Kyoto had closed, so the directionless stroll was the way to go. We ended up finding the river right away, and right from there, the contrast between Kyoto and Tokyo was perfectly clear. I suppose I had noticed it in the past, but after spending a week trying to get to know Tokyo, I could really feel the different character that Kyoto has.

Tokyo does not have anywhere that looks like this.

As we walked along the river, we must have passed hundreds of these restaurants, all with porches on the river, all with women in Kimono serving groups of businessmen and older Japanese couples. I don't know what they serve or what these places are called, but they are pretty cool.

In Tokyo, I suddenly felt lonely seeing young couples all around, but in Kyoto the same feeling was mixed with love of the great Kimono everyone was wearing. It's really something you hardly see in Tokyo, but in Kyoto it's common for groups of young people to be out in traditional clothes.

Coming off the river, we walked right into some sort of demonstration. That sign says 2000 years, and something about a west shrine or temple. What I like about these guys is their umbrellas - I want an umbrella with monk's protests written on it.

As Kyoto was never bombed in the war, there are a lot of bits of old pre-war style buildings all around. They are surrounded and encroached upon by newer architecture, but little bits like this - I look at it, and I can imagine the city as it was in the 20s and 30s, low buildings that looked like this along the commercial streets, and wood and tile homes and teahouses crammed together along the dirty back streets.

Night fell, and we walked back along the road that ran behind the porch restaurants. One gets to the restaurants through long narrow alleys, some clean and lined with bamboo, but some looking more like this.

That sign for "Paul's Boutique" kind of kills it for me.

I stopped to take a picture of this book store, and the owner, who was sitting on a railing behind me got a big kick out of the fact that I was taking a picture of her empty, dark bookstore.

Another alley.

So, then we got some dinner and went back to the hotel, at which point Gabe decided to close his eyes at about 9:30 and fell fast asleep. Not wanting to bother him I went out into the kitchen and met the people who seem to live at Uno. It was an interesting group, a bunch of travel bums basically, one guy had been here four months, had been farming in Shikoku, staying in people's houses, bouncing from place to place. Another guy had come to see his girlfriend in Tokyo and had some sort of relationship mishap and ended up in Kyoto without her and without plans. The farmer and the girlfriendless one decided to hitchhike back to Tokyo tomorrow, but that night they were going to go out. They asked me if I wanted to, and I decided why not - I went to tell Gabe, who seemed very confused as to what time it was, who I was going out with, and why, but his confusion lasted all of five seconds, and then he was back asleep.

We ended up at some tiny basement reggae bar that was serving 400 yen red stripe and playing the oddest selection of reggae you have ever heard. The best one was "Magic Carpet Ride" from Aladdin - the reggae version. If you don't understand the words, it's all just reggae, I suppose, but the really cool looking Japanese girls dancing to a reggae mix of a song from Aladdin was pretty funny.

Oddly enough, I met this fellow and his sister.

I say oddly, because they live about ten minutes from me in Brooklyn, two stops further down on the F train. They were living in London - he was working, she was bumming along for the ride, and they were just traveling for fun. The found the bar by chance, and I almost didn't go out at all. As we got to talking, he had gone to Stuyvesant and knew a few kids from my high school, and she had gone to her prom with Ian Cella - a kid who I sat next to in elementary school. How strange is that? Very strange.

We talked about Brooklyn, Japan, high school, and we drank some beers. The brother (whose name I have since forgotten) and I watched the girls dancing a bit, at which point he informed me that "Japan is a fine country." And he meant fine about the looks of the ladies, not the general appeal of the country. According to him, and he seemed well traveled enough, Japan is the number two most fine country. Number one is Denmark. Who knew? I'll have to see if they need English teachers who can speak a little Japanese in Denmark.

The next day was our single full day in Kyoto, and so we made a point to head out early and see as much as we could. The first two times I went to Kyoto were so perfect and I had so much more time - that while I took a lot of pictures, I wasn't crazy about most of them. It's tough for a hazy summer day to compete with the fall foliage of last November, or even the pouring rain of March.

A graveyard at Chion-in.

We did have a knack for finding the traditional Japanese weddings. I really wanted to go up there and get the awesome picture that the photographer was getting, but it was off limits and guarded by two serious looking monks. How about that for a wedding portrait though?

Gabe, taking in Japan.

I really like this picture - it's not amazing in any way, it's very conservative and the sort of thing you might find in a guidebook. The thing is, you would find it in a guidebook because it sums up a lot of the feeling of being in Kyoto, and when I see this picture, I remember what it's like to be there, and that's important.

Side note: This is the coolest tour guide I have ever seen. He was there with an American family, showing them around, but in full traditional dress with a topknot. All he needed was two swords tucked into his sash and he would be a totally credible samurai.

Kinkaku-ji gardens.

I totally owned Gabe in the "throw ten yen into the stone bucket" game. How dumb would you feel if you were the person who threw the one that's all the way in the back, or the one right in front?

We did some more stuff, had a good dinner, and then slept uneventfully (and kind of uncomfortably) at the Uno House. In the morning we packed and headed out. We had some time to kill, so we decided to walk back to the river. It had poured rain all night, and the rain had scrubbed the haze out of the sky. It had also raised the river tremendously, which was quite a sight to see.

This is almost the same picture as the first one. Look at the difference, in how clear the air is, how low the clouds are, how high the water is, and how much of the plants have been washed away.

And that was that. I put Gabe on his train to Narita and watched him fight with a Japanese man for his seat as the train pulled away, then had half an hour to watch trains come and go until mine came.

A 700 series Nozomi superexpress.

With some careful planning I had managed to get myself on one of the once-an-hour new 500 series trains, which was the only Shinkansen I had not ridden. While most Shinkansen have long streamlined noses, their regular cars look about like normal train cars, boxy and square. The 500 cars are cylinders, and the front of the train is longer and pointier than any of the other trains. The canopy is a shiny black bubble. I was pumped.

Daaaaang.

The train looks, sounds, feels like, moves as fast as, and costs as much as an airplane. I was home in 32.532 seconds.

And that's that. It's 12:28, so as the Japanese say, dekita - I've done it. Back on Friday for more solo adventures.

Gabe On Osakikamijima

2006-07-10T19:20:00.000+09:00

A short update tonight, but a nice one, I think. After my week in Tokyo, I was ready to come home to the island. I loved every minute of Tokyo, but after a while the heat, living out of a suitcase, not having friends around, and not being able to cook began to wear on me. Gabe and I packed and caught a Shinkansen home. It was a busy week, I worked, Gabe came to school, and we did almost all of the things I love to do on the island. I didn't take many pictures, as I was busier being a guide, but I did take a few.

On Tuesday of that week I took the day off and Mori took us to Aakajima - a tiny little island made of two hunks of rock connected by a little sandy beach. As soon as the water warms up a little, Mori and I are going to go snorkeling for shellfish off this island. The edge of the island is a rock shelf going straight down to about 50 feet of water, full of overhangs and rock ledges. Just today Mori asked me if I could snorkel - I told him of course, but he said this was hard snorkeling. Apparently you have to swim straight down about ten feet, then grab onto a rock ledge to keep the current from washing you away and see if you can find any of these giant snails hanging on to the underside of the rock. If you can, you have to pull yourself under and try to grab them, and then swim to the surface to get some air. I can't wait.

Snorkel site 1.

Intrepid explorers A and B. You can see the rock face under water well here.

The water was pretty icy, but Mori insisted it was fine, and while we continued to refuse, he went swimming.

Looks like something from a tour brochure, doesn't it?

Mori got a nasty jellyfish sting along the whole length of his arm, but to the bitter end, he insisted that the water had been fine. I don't know.

I drove the boat home - I can now check "drive a boat on the inland sea" off my list.

Priority one during Gabe's visit was to share the joys of scootering. We went on more than one nice long scooter ride all around the island, and for those I brought my camera. Like anyone who rides a scooter here and really understands the appeal, Gabe began to wonder what a scooter would cost back home, and whether it was worth getting one. We talked about it a bit, because it's something I have considered, and I raised the point that had convinced me that scooters were better left in Japan: Where in the world could you ever hope to find better roads and conditions for scootering? I really think you would be hard pressed anywhere. The roads here are often too narrow for cars, they are almost always empty of cars, and they are too steep for bicycles. Beyond that, they are beautiful windy roads, often passing though bamboo forests, jungle, coastline, and mountaintops in the course of 15 or 20 minutes. The distances are never so far as to be prohibitive with the 55 km/h cap on the scooters, and this is five minutes away from my house.

That's after we passed a tiny stone bridge over a little waterfall, and then is followed by ten or fifteen more tiny switchbacks.

The tiny waterfall.

Scooters 1 and 2 - literally, those are their license plates. This picture is a small part of why I love scootering so much.

Like I mentioned - from jungle to mountaintop in about 2 minutes.

This area is completely different from where I live, and yet it's a fifteen minute drive if you take your time. It looks like something about third world countries from National Geographic if you ask me.

A little shrine we found in Kinoe.

Inside the shrine.

This picture - I love this picture, and not because it's a particularly wonderful picture. To me this picture is everything I love about riding the scooter. I'm standing in some place I just found on the side of the road, and as I look down and across the inland sea, I get a view that few people who don't live here will ever get to see. A tiny shred of a town is wrapped around this one bend in the road, maybe it was bigger in the past, but now it's just a few houses, a meeting hall, and a shrine. The scooters are parked down there, mine has its seat open because I just pulled out my camera to take some pictures, and the jacket I wear when I ride is draped over the basket. That's all well and good and nicely evocative, but what really gets me is the road. That perfect narrow curve, swinging left around a corner, and then tightening into a right between two ancient houses, and then winding along the coast. I look at that curve, and I feel it in my bones, leaning left, letting off the gas, swinging my weight over and leaning right, checking the mirror to see if anyone is coming, and then putting on the gas as the sound of the little 50cc engine echoes off the old mud and bamboo walls. Sitting at the computer writing this, I can almost hear that sound, I can almost smell the sea, and I can almost feel the wind in my face as I accelerate into the next set of curves. I wouldn't buy a scooter when I went home because nothing in New York could ever come close to the experience of scootering here.

And that was about it. We did more things, had more rides, had dinner at Mori's house, played video games, and before we knew it, the week was over, and it was time to go to Kyoto. We left on Friday and got another train. You'll hear about that action packed day and a on Wednesday, but here are two travel pictures that are not necessarily from leaving the island the last time, but they remind me of heading out to Kyoto.

Tokyo: Wandering Back to Harajuku

2006-07-08T21:58:00.000+09:00

A couple days after going to the fish market, my friend Gabe flew in from New York, and I had about 9 days to show him Tokyo, the island, and Kyoto. Needless to say we had quite a schedule. In one heroic day, we started at 7:30 and hit the fish market, Shinjuku, Harajuku, Ginza for yakitori lunch, Ikebukuro, back to Harajuku, a nice walk to Shibuya as the sun went down, and then back to the hotel. Considering he was just off the plane the night before with 13 hours of jet lag, Gabe was a trooper. I didn't take very many pictures, but for the day and a half we spent in Tokyo, I have a few. Here they are.

The extremely polite white-gloved police officers of Ginza.

Most of these pictures I'm not exactly sure where I was or what I was doing, they could fall into a category called "Things that caught Ben's interest briefly while he walked around Tokyo."

One thing - high school students. In Japan, but especially in the cities, high school students are incredibly cool. Maybe I don't remember high school very clearly, but it seems to me that when I was there, no one was anywhere near as cool as the kids I saw on the street in Tokyo. They have to wear school uniforms, which usually means jackets and ties for the boys with matching pants, and short skirts, high socks, a blouse and a some sort of tie for the girls. Maybe it's because they don't have to pay attention to their clothes, but so many of them have awesome hair, excellent accessories, and the perfect completely aloof look on their faces. I told myself that I wouldn't leave Tokyo without getting one picture of a good group of kids looking as cool as can be. That is actually a tall order, because there's always the risk of looking sketchy, a lone gaijin snapping shots of high school girls in short skirts, but I buckled down and did my best. With every perfecto opportunity that I missed, I wouldn't call this a complete success, but at least when I look at this picture, I'll remember the others, and this girl has got a pretty good look.

Interestingly enough, those skirts are completely normal in Japan. There is simply no taboo on short skirts, as the girls wear them starting in elementary school. It is far more scandalous to show some midriff or wear a low-cut shirt than it is to wear a six inch long skirt. Not to mention that this girl is wearing some frilly red bow on her chest and stands there looking like she owns the city. I don't know anyone back home who could pull that off, especially not when they were in high school.

Random lantern: a little temple in Shinjuku.

Back to Harajuku

As Harajuku is my favorite place in Tokyo, I made Gabe go twice we went in the morning, took in the people, the shopping, walked the neighborhood a bit, and then went to see if the crazy Harajuku cos-players were there, and they were not. I'll get back to that, but we walked into the park and went to see Meiji-jingu, one of the two big temples in Tokyo.

Meiji-jingu seems to be the place to go if you want to have a traditional Japanese wedding, and so look what we found!

The advantage of sneaking right up behind the photographer and taking a picture - It looks like they were all posing for you. How about this setup though? It looks straight out of the late 19th century.

In Mori's words, "this kind of wedding is so boring. You have to sit seza (on the floor on your knees) for two hours, and then drink some sake. Then you sit for two more hours, and then you drink more sake. Then you sit more."

That hair impresses me.

After watching the people, and hanging out a bit more, Gabe and I headed back out through the park. Somehow we got into a situation where we would both take the same picture, and then we would both argue that ours was clearly better. So.

Mine is better.

Mine is better.

This one, really - mine is better.

Much later in the day, when we came back, the cos-players were out, and so I decided to take the classic touristy picture. These kids come out on the weekends and wear crazy costumes, usually anime characters, super goths, victorian maids, punks, or some crazy mix of those themes. Lots of men in corsets, high boots, crazy hats and crazier makeup. They arrive looking like normal kids with a small rolling suitcase, they change, and then they sit around for the day, being seen and photographed, enjoying the attention. When Gabe and I got there, we surveyed the scene. There were three girls in ridiculous outfits posing for a photographer, some kids packing up, and then off to one side there was a guy sitting away from his friends, looking scary. Gabe and I at first agreed that he was probably too scary to go over to, but then I decided that if I didn't take the picture I would regret it forever, and besides, I had to show how tough I was now after a year in Japan.

As I wandered over to the guy, his eyes lit up. I asked him in Japanese if I could take a picture and he was on his feet with a big smile on his face and getting into a pose before I finished the question. I wanted him sitting, so I used my essential classroom Japanese ("sit down please") and elicited hoots of approval from his friends. He sat down and got into his pose, which was the most serious thing I have ever seen. This pose was heavily practiced, and involved a number of hand gestures as well that I didn't get in the photo. I took a couple pictures, and then passed the camera to him so he could look at the pictures.

The big smile came back right away, and he passed back the camera and said "good! I like...picture!" I told him his English was amazing, and he said (in Japanese) "ok, now take my friends' pictures." And so I did.

It was too funny. These super serious kids acted just like my students when I actually talked the them, and they all waved and said their best "see you! good bye!" when I left.

I love Japan. How could you not after something like that?

Give me some hours.

2006-07-08T00:44:00.000+09:00

My life was (once again) hijacked by karaoke and whiskey highballs, I will put up the final Tokyo post tomorrow.

Apologies.

Tokyo: Ginza and Tsukiji

2006-07-05T21:08:00.000+09:00

Ginza

After Harajuku, Shinjuku, and Shibuya, I decided it was time to see some new places. I flipped through the guidebook, and Ginza popped up, a giant commercial center, lots of stores and fancy restaurants, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

As it turned out, I didn't love Ginza - it felt like the shopping streets in uptown Manhattan, expensive stores fancy old ladies, big wide streets lined on both sides with big department stores selling giant arrays of handbags and fancy pumps. The people were significantly less hip than those of the last few days, and they didn't have the spark that I think of when I think of Tokyo people.

This looks like an American city to me. It even has American flags!

Some of the department store windows were crazier than others - this one in particular was good, especially with that guy standing in front of it.

I started making up my mind that Ginza was just not for me, surrounded by highways and crammed full of stores that didn't interest me, restaurants that were too expensive, and so I decided to walk away from the commercial center. Things immediately got better.

First of all, the sky started getting dark and ominous, so that was nice.

To get out from the impending rainstorm, I sought shelter. I saw the JR train tracks in the distance and headed towards them. As I turned a corner, suddenly it went from giant shopping streets to something that looked more like Blade Runner.

Tiny restaurants packed into tight corners were all over.

And so I walked, following the tracks, going through cramped little passageways now and then, beckoned by someone to come in and have a beer or a bowl of noodles. Up ahead of me I saw an archway under the tracks with smoke pouring out of it. As I got closer I smelled barbequing, and I knew I had found the best part of Ginza. I had found the semi-famous yakitori alley under the tracks, and the semi-fame was well-deserved.

The alley houses two restaurants, directly across from each other. Both sell two things: Yakitori (grilled chicken skewers) and beer. Both are crammed full of businessmen every day, and they both look great.

The alley, from the other side.

Did I sit down, have a beer and a few skewers? You bet I did. They were delicious.

Tsukiji Fish Market

The next day I decided I would go to Tsukiji Fish Market - the guidebook said Tsukiji was a necessary stop in all trips to Tokyo, so I got up at 5 in the morning and headed over. I got there at about six and followed the general flow of foot traffic to find the market. After a few minutes walk, I thought "aha! I have found it." There were rows of stalls, narrow little alleyways, and some people wandering about. A bunch of tourists stood in front of a shop and took pictures. I walked over.

People were getting ready for the day, arranging their wares and making sure everything was clean.

There was also some fish.

As I wandered, I was really underwhelmed. Sure, there were some stalls, and some people buying things, but I couldn't see why this was so necessary in a visit. It seemed overrun by tourists and finished by 6:30. I found a quiet spot and opened the guidebook. Apparently, Tsukiji Fish Market does about 23 million dollars in fish sales every day. Apparently it is a dangerous place to walk around due to the phenomenal number of tiny trucks careening around with whole tunas strapped to them. Apparently, I hadn't found Tsukiji Fish Market yet. I started walking. In the distance I heard a faint roaring sound. I followed it.

Coming around a corner, I saw a pile - a mountain is closer to it - of Styrofoam containers. I knew I had found the right spot.

The roar got louder, and revealed itself to be the sound of hundreds of three-wheeled trucks careening around, with and without tunas.

Make no mistake, I put myself in great danger to get this picture. These things are going fast.

They were all going in and out of a giant dark warehouse, and so, dodging and sidestepping, I made my way in.

To one side was a giant pushcart parking area.

The warehouse's main road made a long U into the distance, so I turned off and headed into the center - the middleman's market.

It was pretty amazing. I don't have numbers, but it easily felt like thousands of people, all hurrying through tiny alleys between enormous displays of fish, people shouting, buying, selling, and jumping out of the way of the little trucks as they came screeching to a halt to discharge some giant piece of fish, and then cruise off again for the next load. behind the stalls, were long alleys, piled high with boxes and bustling with people preparing new fish for display.

I like that picture, I have to admit.

It would be difficult to capture the tremendous variety and amount of marine life on display and for sale. For example. My supermarket here on the island, serving maybe 5,000 people, has a fish section that puts most fish stores in New York to shame. The variety, freshness, and quantity is amazing, and that's in a tiny country supermarket. This is a market called "Tokyo's Kitchen" - almost every good restaurant, every fish store, probably the nicer supermarkets - as well as places I am certainly forgetting - all get their fish from here. Every day. Every year, the Tsukiji Fish Market clears two billion dollars in fish. That is a quarter of Iceland's entire annual GDP. Almost any fish in the world is bought and sold at Tsukiji, and probably in enormous quantities.

Tuna.

Eels - yum!

There were some really beautiful cuts of fish on display.

Sushi grade tuna - maguro and toro.

There were also some nice and bloody displays - you should see the cutting board here. Every time a still-living fish was flopped on the board for chopping, it would flop around and blood would go flying everywhere.

This picture is mostly for the knife. See that handle and blade on the left? That is the big tuna-chopping blade. It extends all the way to the floor, the blade is probably five feet long and incredibly sharp. It is wielded with both hands, and requires one or two helpers. We'll come back to the giant knife/sword.

There's a lot of frozen fish as well, I'm not sure exactly why - maybe it has come from further or is used for something different. It is cut with a band saw - you can actually see the fish band saw in the previous picture, on the right.

This was the most beautiful cup of green tea I have ever seen - perched on that perfect smooth piece of wood, hovering over the display of tuna steaks, bright green with just the perfect amount of bubbles.

With all the business going on all around, there was a lot of bookkeeping to be done. Booths with one or two women inside them kept up with orders and customers shouted from the selling area, and behind the cleaning tables was usually someone writing columns of numbers in a bunch of little accounts books.

Another pushcart area - I guess with so many around it pays to have yours be recognizable.

Back to the knife. When wielded, it moves quickly, so in this low light it was tough to get a picture. You can see it here though, a blur of sharp steel - and you can see the damage it has just done to that tuna on the cart.

It must be hard, because the guy bent over to catch his breath after the cut was made.

Here you can see the knife - you can also see what a perfect cut they made into that tuna - having cleaned a few small fish, I can't even imagine the sill involved in wielding that blade, cutting a fish worth probably almost ten thousand dollars, and getting every single bit of meat off the bone. In a few places I saw sellers working the finished carcasses with spoons, scraping meat out from between the bones - breakfast, most likely.

As it got later, things started slowing down. Fish was still being bought and sold at an insane pace, but it felt like the energy had calmed down. The first big buyers had been in and out, and now came the second and third waves. I saw less people cutting and more taking a moment to rest and have a snack or cup of tea. It was about 7:30.

These would be the pieces cut off a tuna with a giant knife, cleaned up and ready to sell.

Shopping basket, Tsukiji style. A lot of guys had these. I want one.

Back out in the big U. It looks like someone just forgot these tunas out here. While that is probably not the case, I like imagining some guy getting back to his stall and thinking "now where did I leave those tunas?"

With this much fish around, you're going to need a lot of ice. Ice was brought in by truck in giant blocks (maybe four or five feet high, three feet around), and the cut and ground to order by a few ice grinders scattered around. Sellers would walk up with a cart or truck covered in empty containers, the guy would heave a block of ice onto the ramp, the machine would start shaking, and with a roar of grinding, the customer would have his ice and be on his way.

By about eight I was feeling a little beat and a little fish-weary. I started making my way out into the rainy morning.

This stall had been closed when I came in, and now as business would be wrapping up, they provided essential services: newspaper, ramen, hot tea, snacks. I have imagined a whole story for the girl who sells tea and newspapers to the fish sellers every day, and it goes something like this. The sellers have all known her since she was the little girl behind the counter with her mother, they would sneak her candy when her mom wasn't looking and she had a wonderful smile that brightened the days of selling fish. She knows all the old guys and they treat her like a daughter, and the day she gets engaged the entire fish market will be electrified and she will have the most delicious fish in all of Japan at her wedding. It's a nice story, right?

Outside, the Styrofoam mountain had tripled in size.

I just imagine this guy thinking "I'm definitely going to need a bigger broom"

As I headed out, some tuna-sickles headed in. The day was far from over.

The truckers, waiting for their loads, probably headed to all the restaurants and shops of Tokyo.

That was about it. The guide says traditionally you should have a sushi breakfast after Tsukiji, but I couldn't find any of the restaurants they mentioned and I ended up having my usual convenience store rice ball and water. Getting up at five pretty much wrecked me, and I did a bit of shopping, but that was about it for the day. I almost fell asleep in a media immersion pod, wandered around a bit, and then came back to the hotel early and passed out. With the Ghibli museum and Tsukiji, I didn't feel like I had to do anything else. I had already seen more amazing things than I deserved.

Tokyo: Shinjuku, Shibuya, and the Ghibli Museum

2006-07-03T18:52:00.000+09:00

I loved being in Tokyo. There's something about that city - the size of it, the clockwork efficiency, maybe the noise of it - it feels different from any place I've been before, and it's someplace I wish I could get to know better. Unfortunately, like any city, once you've seen the sights and toured the neighborhoods, you have to meet people who know the spots, or you're eventually stuck being in the city without a social life. Japan has lots of establishments that are not particularly foreigner-friendly, so I didn't feel like chancing it and walking into random closed doors. This is all in retrospect of course, in terms of blog, we are only on day three. The day after Harajuku, I went to Shinjuku - the neighborhood I spent my first days in Japan in, and what some people consider to be the beating heart of Tokyo.

Shinjuku

I'm standing in the cool half of Shinjuku. Across the tracks is the lame half.

Being the beating heart - Shinjuku is full of business, and so during the week the streets are pretty quiet, and teeming with salarymen in the morning, at lunch, and at night. I had spent a lot of time in the center strip of Shinjuku, so I decided to venture out and get a feel for the neighborhood. At first, the impression was so-so. A lot of Shinjuku off the main roads looks like Downtown Manhattan behind the financial district - cold office buildings, a few businesspeople on the street, not much life, not much color. I kept walking around, and eventually found some smaller streets, restaurants of all types getting ready for the lunch rush.

The salaryman charge is about to begin.

Nearby was some sort of ticket agent or something.

It must be dark in there.

It got to be around lunch time, so I started walking back to the station. I stopped in a Starbucks for a drink and a rest (before you judge, I have determined that in Tokyo, Starbucks may be the best place to sit down, cool off, change lenses, review pictures, and plan the next move - there aren't many open coffee shops with a view of the street here, and I really liked sitting in the window watching the people go by.) Once business there was complete, I headed back to the station - either the city was just waking up, or I had my eyes closed in the morning. I saw all kinds of life I hadn't noticed the first time around.

In a back alley - this is the kind of thing I love about Japan.

I just realized this is exactly the same place as the first picture, just about four hours later.

The endless rows of amazing Japanese cell phones.

In front of the station - it was like these ladies got lost when they stepped out of their time machine.

I got lunch, and decided there was something I had to do. Tokyo - actually all of Japan - is littered with Pachinko parlors. They make a phenomenal amount of noise, attract compulsive gamblers and organized criminals, and are a pervasive part of Japanese culture. Mori had told me that Pachinko was no good and I shouldn't bother trying it, but here I was, done with lunch and not much planned - so I picked the biggest, loudest Pachinko parlor I could find, and went in. By shouting directly in someone's ear, I established that I had never played before and how do you do it? A nervous looking guy found me a machine ("It's a new machine!" he shouted into my ear in Japanese) and showed me how to feed 1000 yen bills directly into the machine.

I fed my bill in, and a pile of tiny chrome balls the size of peas came out. Turning a knob, you shoot the balls into an elaborate contraption of pins and bouncers, with the ultimate goal being to get your balls into a little hole in the center of the machine. Every time you do this, a video slot machine spins in the middle of the machine, and that's it. If you get three in a row, you go into another mini-game, where the point is (surprise) to get balls into the same little hole. While you're in the mini-game, each ball you get in nets you a lot of new ones. The new ones come out into a lower tray that you periodically empty into a removable tray below your machine. I was sitting between to pros who showed me what to do or reminded me to dump out the balls I was winning when my thing was full. I played for half an hour on my first 1000 yen (about 9 dollars). I filled three trays, having to push a button on the machine to call an assistant to put the full one behind me and give me a new empty. After that half an hour my ears were ringing, my eyes were watering from all the cigarette smoke, and I decided that that was quite enough pachinko. I had no idea how I had done, I figured I had maybe made 20 bucks or something. I changed my (almost 5,000!) balls for special computer coded chips which I then had to take to another place to change for money. When I handed these clear blocks of plastic to the bored looking lady in a booth, I watched her count them off, and then count off some bills - to my great surprise she counted off almost 20,000 yen - like 200 bucks! I was somewhat flabbergasted by this, as I had never played pachinko before and I certainly didn't expect to walk out with a day's spending money handed to me by a lady in a booth.

Sea Adventure - my pachinko game.

After that, winnings in hand, I decided to partake in more electronic entertainment in Shinjuku, and that meant arcades. I went from one to the next, trying to find the best one, playing a little in each.

At one, salarymen played Tetris and other similar games during their lunch hour.

This is one of my favorite things about Japan. The arcades are not focused - like what few arcades remain in the States - on taking your money and throwing you out as soon as possible. Here is a combination strategy/card/arcade game. You make a team of soccer players from collectible cards, trying to maximize strengths, and then you lay them on this table. The table reads the cards and brings the players, your stats, and the other players involved in the current tournament up on your screen. You then take all the time you want picking strategies, selecting who will do what, and then you join in. A full tournament takes place between everyone playing, with coaching information on the small screens, and the game "broadcast" on double high-definition displays in front. As things change or players get injured, you will see players frantically switching out players, moving them on the field, calling time outs in order to look for their star rookie in their pile of cards. Tournaments last a long time, probably hours, and there are comfortable benches, drinks and snacks, and ashtrays so you don't ever have to get up. After the match is over, your results are written onto a special card which is dispensed for you, so that next time you can continue with the same record. There are other games like this too - feudal Japanese war strategy, Gundam (in the background), and a horse racing game where each player has a single card containing the horse they have raised and trained to race.

Photo booths - usually for ladies only.

After that, I wanted to check my e-mail, and I made another wonderful discovery - they call them Media Immersion Pods here, but that name sounds fancier than it is. These are places that you can go for a media fix. The sign says internet cafe, but it's more than that. For 300 yen an hour, you get a cubicle with just enough room for a computer, a flatscreen TV, a Playstation 2, and a big reclining chair. At the front are rows of DVDs, huge libraries of Manga, video games, and magazines. You grab whatever you want before heading to your booth, where you can lock yourself in and just melt your brain in total privacy and isolation. Certainly, lots of people use these for sketchy purposes, but I loved it - sitting in this dark cocoon, the sound of people walking to get new movies or manga the only sound, writing e-mails and watching Japanese TV while I guiltlessly and anonymously vegged out.

The third floor of booths.

The second floor.

By the mid-afternoon, I was still at around a 100 dollar profit for the day, and I decided to move on.

Shibuya

Shibuya is the biggest of the times-square style intersections in Tokyo - it's the one in Lost in Translation, and it is a great place to watch people, if only because there are so phenomenally many there, at any time of day. For example.

Looking towards the main intersection, while the lights say "Don't cross."

20 seconds later. How insane is that?

I watched that a few times, and then headed into Shibuya's (surprisingly sketchy) back streets.

What I love about this sign is that at some point someone had to come out and put tape over the "drugs" at the bottom. Also, that sign on the right says "We do gift wrapping!"

Love Hotel Hill - I have neither the time nor the energy to get into love hotels now - in two sentences: In modern day Japan, children usually stay with their parents and family through marriage, and thus young people have little time alone and less privacy. Love hotels are a the Japanese answer - stay by the hour, check in and out anonymously by vending machine, pick an insanely themed room (medieval castle, hospital room, prison, classroom, and there are normal ones too) buy your sex toys or porn from the vending machine in the room, and have fun.

3 hours rest - 4,000 yen (38 dollars).

I headed back to the main intersection as it got later, where I sat and watched the people ebb and flow for a while.

That is excellent hair.

And these are excellent shoes:

A couple other shots.

Karaoke - suspiciously absent from my stay in Tokyo.

The Ghibli Museum

This is getting a bit long, I appreciate it if you've read this far. This is the last part.

I had heard some good things about the Studio Ghibli museum in Tokyo. Studio Ghibli is the anime studio headed by Miyazaki Hayao, they did Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle, as well as a huge amount of other equally wonderful movies. Out in the suburbs of Tokyo, they have a big museum - it sells out months in advance, and so I had bought a ticket online in May. A long subway ride later, and I was there.

The bus stand, with a Miyazaki creature on top - no mistaking where you are going.

Totoro, greeting guests.

It was so wonderful! It was to Disneyland what Miyazaki's movies are to Disney cartoons. The whole thing was built in a big wild park, looking like some giant creature half-buried in the ground. The outside was full of round stained glass windows (real stained glass, depicting scenes from the movies), lots of climbing plants, patios, walkways, verandas, and little gardens. Inside it was like being in a Miyazaki movie set, if those sets actually existed. Beautiful woodwork and old looking multi-pane windows were all over, the floors were a mix of hardwoods and terra cotta tiles, worn with use. There were great long curving staircases going up, with long brass handrails, but if you wanted there were also tiny winding spiral staircases, sized for children, curving all around. The museum had no set route, they wanted you to find your own way through the building. Each room was special, a dim gallery celebrating everything about animation and projecting movies a projection booth made from a train engine, a series of picture frames that were scenes from Miyazaki's movies, painted on probably 20 layers of glass, just like they do the backgrounds in the movies. To peek into these frames and see a moment from Totoro, with Totoro just hidden behind a mass of branches and leaves, the characters standing in the foreground, and a deep landscape in the background was really wonderful, like seeing the movies come to life.

The outside - pictures were entirely forbidden indoors.

In the roof garden.

Beautiful gardens, perfectly tended, with winding paths perfect for exploring if you're seven years old.

The best part of the museum proper was on the second floor. The when I was at the museum, I thought it was a recreation of Studio Ghibli, but reading the catalog I bought, I learned it was something more - an animation studio squeezed into a fictional English mansion, worked by characters invented by Miyazaki. Each station was a step from the actual creation of a Ghibli film, but the aesthetic and sensibility was straight out of the movies. Everything was worn cushions, beautiful, messy chaos, and a painstaking attention to detail. The stuff that populated these fantasy rooms was all real, and perfectly illustrated the process of these artists.

This isn't my picture, It's from the catalog. One of the studio rooms.

A desk had a pile of ancient cassette tapes, a broken down boom box teetering on a stack of old books, and a big bowl completely full of cigarette butts. Every sketch on the wall, every half finished or finished painting or animation cell was the real deal. There was a stack of papers on one of the desks, and I leafed through them and each one was an original (or maybe a copy, I don't know) gouache background from Spirited Away. A shot of the suburban streets of Japan, a misty lake, a field with a clear blue sky - each one painted beautifully and marked with what scene and shot it was for. One room practically took my breath away, on three walls, floor to ceiling, were little gouache and pencil sketches of all kinds of things from all of his movies. Airplanes, animals, characters, places, the biggest one was maybe a foot square. They were all pinned on the wall, covering some old airplane posters and were covered in notes. A room filled with bookshelves had copies of every single storyboard from every single movie that Ghibli has done, thick books that you could leaf through while sitting at an old wooden table. Framed on the walls were original Miyazaki paintings and cells, moments that he had picked and saved to decorate his work spaces. He had giant binders, maybe seven or eight of them, that were inspiration books. Each page, maybe 24x12" was covered in 4x6 photos that Miyazaki took while traveling. There were pictures of all over Japan, of Kyoto in fall, Tokyo in spring, the countryside, travels in Germany, England, the South Pacific, from small airplanes, scuba diving - thousands of pictures, all taken with what looked like a cheap point and shoot, but each one of a scene or detail that grabbed his interest for some reason. It was really amazing, being in these rooms, surrounded by one of the most lively creative processes I have ever seen, and being able to leaf through these inspiration books.

On the roof - a full-size robot from Laputa: Castle in the Sky.

I guess what was really amazing about this is that it was a kid's museum in every way, but the fidelity and completeness of every bit of every exhibit went beyond anything I had ever seen before. I was in the storyboard room, and as a piece of scenery, there was a little bookshelf. The middle shelves had sculptures of airplanes from Porco Rosso on them, but the top shelf had four old-looking books. I pulled one out, and it was a real old American book, with someone's name and "1939" written on the inside cover. I went back into the other room, and every single book in the enormous pile next to the storyboard desk was real. The giant jar of used pencils all really were used up pencils, with the ends smudged dark from dirty hands. The studios were fictitious, but I would bet that the materials that made them up were all from the real Studio Ghibli.

I don't know what anime this is from, but it was cool.

The shops, the galleries, the movie theater where you see an original short that you can't see anywhere else - every detail, every corner - was perfect. There was no cheap plaster to imitate stone, no phony wood anywhere. The railings were all beautiful cast-iron that reminded me of Cobble Hill front yards. Everything was real, as if Miyazaki himself decided to turn his drawings and ideas into a real thing. I think that's probably not very far from the truth, but it was really a great feeling, being in a place that - when you touch the walls or crouch down to go through a tiny doorway from The Cat Returns - doesn't feel like a big lie that is designed to fool children.

So that was all wonderful, but I actually got the best thing last. The museum has a cafe, the Straw Hat Cafe, and I figured it would be an overpriced and mediocre museum cafe, but I was hungry and far from central Tokyo, and it was lunchtime. I went up, and got on line, and after a half-hour wait, I was seated at the counter. The first sign that things were going well was the drink menu. The first and second items on the menu were "Looking up at a Clear Blue Sky in the Field Cream Soda" and "Sunset Cream Soda." Obviously, I ordered the first. First of all, the prices were significantly lower than what you might expect to pay in a mid-range restaurant in Tokyo. Second of all, everything was organic, fresh, and the straws were real straws, as in nice pieces of straw from a field.

Again, not my picture. Two shots of the restaurant from the catalog.

The restaurant, like the museum, spared no expense in capturing the feel of the movies. Most Miyazaki movies have some scene of a busy kitchen or workshop operated mostly by women, and it was as if those scenes had been inspired by this restaurant. Dozens of women and a few men worked in a completely visible kitchen, each with a soft-looking white shirt, sort of reddish-orange apron, and a matching cloth tied in their hair. It's difficult to describe, but if you've seen the look in any of his movies, you know what I'm talking about. Again, every detail was perfect - a man drew a straw hat in chocolate on the foam of every hot chocolate, the kettles were all giant and made of painted metal in deep yellows and reds, when they had to make iced tea, they put a block of ice about 8 inches square in a pot, and poured a boiling kettle of tea over it. Ice cubes didn't come out of a freezer, but were broken off a beautiful clear block of ice with a pick. When my drink came, it was a light blue cream soda with a perfect sphere of homemade vanilla ice cream floating on top of it, held up by two big chunks of ice. I had a delicious pork sandwich and then sat and watched it all go on around me for a while.

Leaving the museum.

And that's it, I'm spent and if you've read this far, so are you. See you Wednesday for what will hopefully be a lighter entry.

Tokyo: Ikebukuro and Harajuku

2006-06-29T18:39:00.000+09:00

So the thrice-weekly updates are lagging this week, but they will be back next week. I spent my week in Tokyo, and it was excellent. I'm going to do something a bit different and break chronology here. I divided my days up between neighborhoods, but within those neighborhoods, I didn't have any particular plans. I'll focus on a few neighborhoods an update, with the photos not necessarily in the order I took them. Usually I make a point of keeping them in order.

Ikebukuro

Ikebukuro is where I stayed. Guidebooks call it a less interesting neighborhood, not a big and bombastic as the main hubs of Tokyo, but not quiet and old either. Ikebukuro, along with Shinjuku was a center of illegal activity during and after the American occupation, and it continues to have a pretty visible bit of gambling, sex industry, and a bit of organized crime. It's not all seedy and sordid, I stayed just ten minutes from the station in a pretty quiet residential area.

My room - a 4.5 tatami box with an air conditioner, a futon, a little table, and that's about it. It was nice, but the people hanging out in the lounge were invariably lame. Oh well.

The center of Ikebukuro. This is basically a nothing in terms of Tokyo's big centers.

The used-to-be-seedy side streets. There were dozens of "pink salons" - sex shops, and I don't mean shops selling sex toys.

I really liked this little restaurant near the station - at dinner time, it always had a line of salarymen waiting outside.

Another restaurant up on the second floor.

The taxi stand - the idea for this picture is basically from the cover of Lonely Planet Tokyo - every once and a while I try to copy good pictures of Japan that I see.

The Japanese hipsters didn't hang out in Ikebukuro, but at night they all came home to it.

Tokyo food - this is not some sort of joke - it is a loaf of white bread with ice cream and candy stuck on top. That does not sound delicious.

I liked Ikebukuro - it wasn't the sort of place you take your friends to see the amazing sites, but it was alive and young, with a lot going on in the streets at night, a good selection of restaurants, and a nice station. I found a few good dinner spots, watched the Yakuza guarding a Pachinko parlor, and wandered the tiny residential streets behind the big department stores. What I really wanted to do was people watch and shop, and for that I needed to go to Harajuku.

On the Yamanote Line.

Harajuku

Harajuku is my favorite neighborhood in Tokyo. My favorite thing about the city is the fashion, and nowhere else are people as well dressed, as cool, or as fun to watch as they are in Harajuku. Tokyo is the most stylish place I have ever seen. Not to be lame and invoke my parents, but my mother was in London during the 70s, and when she was here, she told me that while London was good, Tokyo is more - more amazingly dressed people, more individual style, more kinds of fashion, and it's everywhere you look. I wasn't in London, but I'm inclined to believe her. At one point I was standing on a street corner, taking pictures and just people watching, and I did a count. For about ten minutes in the middle of a Monday, around 85 percent of the people were really hip and cool - cool clothes, good hair, the right accessories - that is a huge amount. I can't think of a place in New York where the vast majority of people are beautiful.

If Japanese hipsters don't interest you, this might be a little boring.

In front of Lawson's Station on Omotesando - the single best place to see cool people in all of Tokyo.

Like this group - seriously, check them out. Hair, clothes, bags - all totally excellent. I guess it's a little different than back home. The knee length cuffed jeans shorts with the two mismatched handbags might not fly, nor would the high ponytail and pink scrunchie - but in context, they are awesome.

The sheer dress goth+jean jacket look.

Also in Harajuku: Excellent shopping - I ended up spending a lot of money buying a huge amount of Japanese designer clothes. I had an awesome time, and if I needed to know what was cool or worth buying, all I had to do was head out into the streets and see what the cool kids were wearing. It was dangerous though, because anything that a Japanese hipster wears looks cool, so I was running a fine line between "that hip kid is wearing a cool shirt" and "that shirt is cool because it is being worn by an incredibly cool Japanese hipster." In the end I think it worked out all right, and I had an awesome time.

I did not look at these two for advice - this is a pretty popular look though - pompadour, deep fake tan, beach attire, and gaudy jewelry. Some of them go further, tanning until their skin is a deep brown, and then drawing giant swaths of shiny silver makeup on their faces.

The main shopping street in Harajuku.

McDonalds - it's actually a place where cool kids eat in Japan.

So, when I was shopping for jeans, I had some trouble finding some that weren't skin-tight on my legs. I don't have particularly large legs, and eventually I was able to find some, but I think people like this guy are the reason.

He looks ill, or severely anorexic, but the point is that someone makes pants for him.

In Book Off, the Barnes and Noble of Japan. Everyone comes in to read the latest book in their manga series of choice.

The girl trying to get everyone up to the second floor, where they could buy all manner of things to dangle from their cell phones.

That is a nice picture to end on. I would write more, but I have company and I am going to Kyoto tomorrow for the weekend. Next week I should be back on my schedule, and we'll get caught up in a week or two.

And I'm Off

2006-06-17T01:02:00.001+09:00

So, once the sports days end, it's pretty calm around here. I didn't take any pictures until today, when I said to myself that I needed to post something, so I had better take some pictures. Without further ado, five pictures from today.

First, a couple of rice fields, on opposite ends of the island.

Then this evening, I headed down to see how the construction was going on Mori's new halfpipe. It's going right along, I ended up working for a half an hour, cutting wood to the right sizes.

The island, of course, remains beautiful as summer rolls around.

From my front door.

On Sunday I'm going to Tokyo for a big photographic adventure. Next Thursday, Gabe (who some of you know) is coming to Japan to visit for a week and a bit! I will try to get my Tokyo pictures up the week after next, but the update schedule is going to relax a bit.

The Last Undokai - Ever

2006-06-12T21:32:00.000+09:00

While I was happy to complain about all the sports days I had to go to, I didn't even realize that the last one I attended would probably be the last Undokai I ever see, and almost certainly the last one I ever participate in. This did not exactly shake me to my core, but it did serve to remind me that my time here is coming to a close - a couple more months and I'm gone, and I am going to miss the hell out of this place. Being here is different from anything I have ever known. It's incredible, every day is surprising and wonderful, but all good things must come to an end. I'm glad I feel this way, it will make me make the most of every single day from here until the day I go, and when I get to New York, I'll keep a part of Osakikamijima with me, even if no one else sees it.

Look at me. Prepare for two solid months of this sappy dreck.

So yeah, it was the last Undokai, but I thought I would just mention that Neko has taken to crawling into bed at around 5 am and then sleeping all day. She's like the hard partier of this relationship, out all night and asleep all day while I work to put food on the table (and small plastic bowl on the floor). The new development is that she actually gets under the covers, so in the morning, she looks the part, watching me get ready for work with half-closed eyes.

What a lazy cat - actually she is only lazy when I am not around. When I am trying to go to bed, it's always insanity time.

So the sports day. I feel like I can't write any more lengthy paragraphs about sports days. This time I was assigned to photograph third years, as this is their last sports day before they graduate, and the photos will be used for their graduation. I took some of the same pictures as before, but mostly I tried to take different pictures. Let me know how it worked out. The same things happened as every other time - the flag was handed, the kids marched, the bombastic music was played.

Before it started, practicing in the half light.

A big difference: the bombastic music was provided by a real band. One student played the flute, the rest were all from elsewhere. When they transitioned back to the tape recorder played into a microphone, it made you appreciate the band all that much more.

Tomoka, the sick girl with the mystery ailment, and her classmates all lined up for the relay in the background. Tomoka is a voracious reader and once read a book in English about the Metropolitan Museum. We had a period in which we had to come up with some English project ideas, and she ended up just asking me about the Met the whole time. It was a sort of magical moment, sitting in the sun in the principal's office in February. I would tell her about the galleries at the Met, or how you can pay what you want at the ticket booth, and she would cover her mouth with a thin hand and laugh.

Ok, the one part of the Undokai that deserves explaining: The parent-child race. So, the third years lined up with their parents, and one by one, they had to race each other. This was not a mere footrace though, it was a many stage affair. Let me give you an example, or many.

First, you race on tricycles. (By the way, that's my boss on the right!)

Sometimes you leave you mom in the dust, as happened here.

Then you tricycle past the paintings that the students did. I think this is one of the funniest pictures I have ever taken. There is something completely ridiculous about this picture. That's Tomoka riding, by the way.

Then you have to get a piece of candy out of a tray full of flour. Some kids used the finesse method, as seen here, blowing the flour away, and then grabbing an exposed candy.

Some used the brute force method. This kid took a giant mouthful of flour to get the candy. This is him exhaling what became an enormous cloud of flour.

Having run a quarter lap with flour and candy in your mouth, you then receive an envelope instructing you how you have to finish. Let me give you some examples.

You might have to go introduce yourself and bow to the Mayor three times before you can cross the finish line.

Your mom might have to read a speech. (Incidentally, isn't that a beautiful drum?)

You might have to do a silly run with a pink umbrella.

Maybe you have to get two volunteers and make a three man stack.

Or maybe your mom needs to run half a lap with two boy's month carp kites.

Either way it's an awesome event that I wish we had back home. Also, at the end you look like this:

Lovely.

Feats of strength. That big V formation from last time does all manner of fancy tricks.

Human pyramid - dual calamity strikes!

This science teacher decided to run the 1000 meters in his teaching outfit. This lasted exactly one lap. By the third he was in a t-shirt and the sunglasses were pushed up on his face. Soon after the sunglasses were dropped somewhere, and he suffered through the rest.

Traditional dance = kids suffering on the hot field wearing three layers of heavy black with gold trim.

Another event that I feel compelled to describe in detail. The all school multi-race (or something like that - I couldn't exactly translate it). The entire school races in this one, in groups of four. The events are as follows:

Barreling forwards without being able to see in a long cardboard box.

Seeing four kids charging forwards on hands and knees down the track was one of the most surreal things I have seen recently.

Especially when they crashed or went off course. None of them knew what was going on other than they couldn't move forward any more.

Sometimes they found themselves moving very quickly - in the wrong direction.

Then walking in silly shoes - I love the look on the face of the kid on the left.

Then through the child trap. This one really held up some kids. They would get stuck, panic, try to back out, get turned around - it was something to see.

The final event, catch the water bottle with your fishing rod.

That is not easy.

And then, water bottle in tow, across the finish line.

A few other Undokai notes.

This woman is the ultimate Undokai mom. High end video camera in the right hand? Check. SLR with big zoom in the left? Check. Fingerless gloves to prevent hand sunburns? Of course. Large Mickey Mouse tote bag for extra film, tapes, and batteries, not to mention impeccably made lunch bento? Check.

And lastly, after the game with the baseball bats, this is how the kids put the bats away.

Ah, Japan.

So, that was going to be my highly unsatisfying ending, but then this morning, something exciting and scary happened! At 5 o'clock this morning, I was awoken by Neko going a little crazy. She was trying to dig into my bed, and when she finally found her way under the blanket she ducked under and then crouched down. Not ten seconds had elapsed when the house started shaking vigorously. It was an earthquake, and a pretty big one at that. I was about 40 miles from the epicenter, but the way the plates line up, I was in the area of highest ground movement. The shift in the plates happened 140 kilometers underground, but the plate that shifted is only 50 kilometers underground in Hiroshima, so the shaking was a lot heavier here. It was like someone picked up the house and gave it a good hard shake back and forth a few times, if I had been standing I would have had to brace myself on something. Some things fell over, and a couple things fell off my desk and kitchen counter, but nothing major. After I calmed down, I turned on the TV and got the news.

So, that's the spread of the earthquake - the X is the epicenter, the red numbers are Japan's scale of measuring earthquakes. While the US uses the Richter scale, which measures energy at the epicenter (this one was 6.2), the Japanese system measures ground movement and visible destruction. As you can see, the 5s are not at the epicenter, but in Hiroshima prefecture. Hiroshima city is the top 5 on the map.

And here is my island (circled in green). Hiroshima is still the top 5. You'll notice that the island is right in the center of a triangle of 5s. Yow!

Anyway, it's been covered in more detail by repuatable news sources. It was exciting in retrospect, but at the time, it was scary. It's not really much fun having your cat trembling in fear while things fall off the flat surfaces in your house and you can hear the beams of wood that hold your room up grinding against each other while the window panes bang back and forth. Either way, it's a good story to tell, and I am happy I got to have an earthquake here. One is enough though, ok Japan?

I'm not sure what I will have to post on Wednesday - If I have something I will post it. If not, Friday. Let me know what you think about with your lovely comments. If you commented last time - thank you.

Achi Kochi (Here and There)

2006-06-09T21:29:00.000+09:00

I've been riding the scooter again. It's finally warm enough, and the moment I got back on the scooter for a tour of the island, I wondered why I had ever stopped. Clearly I stopped because it was bitter cold, but still. Getting back on the bike was a revelation. Riding a scooter is great - you have the sun on your back, you can smell the sea, the road, the flowers, you feel the wind on your body, and the view is always excellent. On top of that, it's exhilarating - winding through mountain roads, leaning into a long sweeping turn, tearing up a mountain and coasting back down the other side - these are things I had missed, but I'm back.

A few days ago Jack Snyder posted a comment on this blog. He didn't realize it, but he actually posted on an entry that was nearly a year old, but he was the English teacher here three or four years ago, and he said that the island really opened up when you take the scooter off the paved roads. I have pretty thoroughly scouted this island by scooter and I couldn't remember any dirt trails leading up into the mountains, and so Jack-sensei and I got to e-mailing. He told me that he had done most of his scootering around Higashino, and that I should check that out. I decided to do just that.

But while we're on this for a moment, I should point out that Jack posted a comment, and that was a rare occurrence. I know it's lame for a blog author to ask for comments, but here I am. When I post these things, I always wonder what people think. I don't care if it's two words, if it's your reaction to what I write, or what I say - then I want to hear it. Writing these things every other day and never hearing back is a lot like giving a speech to an empty auditorium. I know what I want to say, and I know people are reading this, but sometimes it feels like I'm shouting into the night and there's just no one out there listening. For those of you who have left comments recently, thank you. I don't think you realize how much I appreciate it.

Phew, enough of that. Higashino. Scooters. Exploration.

I realized after the fact that almost all my pictures are of bamboo forests. I haven't actually gone to these places to photograph them yet - these are the shots from the first time through, the scooter still running beside me. When I go back, I'll do them more justice.

I had forgotten that I was living in a tropical paradise - but this road reminded me.

Each bamboo forest has a different flavor. This one was quiet and cool, with a dusty blue color.

This one was the opposite, warm and sunny, with insects and a breeze that smelled like flowers. I should do a book, I can call it "The Moods of Bamboo."

Next up is Hiroshima. I went to Hiroshima on Wednesday for a couple reasons. First, I was getting a birthday present for Sabrina (It's her birthday today - happy birthday Sabrina!), and second I needed to practice taking pictures of people. Maybe I have mentioned that I am going to Tokyo again for a week to get those pictures of people that I didn't get last time and regretted missing. I go in a week, and I wanted to try out taking pictures of people in a city. I figured since lately I have gotten my chops photographing students, people on the street would be a little bump up in difficulty. No! It's hard! After about a half hour just to get the courage up to point the camera at people on the street, I spent a good three hours missing perfect photos and messing up the ones I did get a shot at. I finished the day somewhat depressed, but in retrospect I have a few good ones. My hat is off to you, Mr. Cartier Bresson - you made it look easy.

That was the result of the day, and while there are a few photos I'm happy with, there isn't one I particularly love. I will have to work my ass off in Tokyo to get the good pictures. Consider this a work log. This is where I start. Let's see if I improve.

Struggling with people all day made me appreciate how easy static objects are, and I did a bit of that too - photographing the city is quite different from quiet little Osakikamijima.

The spring and summer fashions.

My scooter is nice, but what if I had this? I might never leave. Notice the exhaust pipe. Also, behind the awesome chopper is a luxury scooter. I can dream.

DeoDeo - I basically have to go in every time I pass one of these stores. They sell every kind of gadget, computer, TV, video game, DVD, camera, lens, computer component, rice cooker, clock - the list goes on. It's an awesome store.

I caught a later bus to Takehara and had to wait about an hour for the ferry, so I decided to stroll around and take pictures in the fading light.

That just says that the road goes to Hiroshima.

There's an enormous bike parking area near the ferry port in Takehara. I had never been in it, before.

How cool is that? It's cool.

The ferry terminal. I know this room well. Also, point of interest. See those yellow lines? Those are so blind people can find their way around. They go down the center of every street, they lead you through train stations, and they have patterns of bumps and ridges to indicate different things.

The room where you can sit and wait in air conditioning or heating. It's so boring at night because the shop closes, so you just sit there and stare at the wall while you wait. No thanks. I just noticed the flowers in this picture. Nice.

And that's it. This weekend it's volleyball tournament and the last (thank goodness) sports day. We'll see what I come up with for Monday.

Kinoe Kids Are Easy To Photograph

2006-06-08T11:15:00.000+09:00

So after the frustration of Higashino on Sunday, and the pictures that I didn't particularly like, I had another opportunity on Monday. Kinoe Junior High and Elementary are having their sports day on the 11th, and Monday was a rehearsal. This wasn't just marching or jump rope though, this was the whole event, start to finish, except without spectators. They ran all the races, did all the games, kept score, and everything else. I was again asked to photograph, and with the familiar feeling of Undokai fatigue, I showed up with the camera.

Immediately, things started working. I don't know why. While I had to work and work for every decent picture at Higashino, Kinoe's photos came easily. Maybe it was the bright sun, the location, or the kids. I don't know. Maybe it was the field was smaller or because there were no spectators I felt freer to move around to take pictures. Either way, something just clicked, and I think these are better and feel easier than the Higashino photos. You be the judge.

I actually took a picture of the chairs in Higashino too. It was not very good.

Having happy smiling kids helps.

Photographing the same thing many times over helps too. When it was time to put on the hachimaki, I knew what to expect, and what kind of photos I wanted. I guess that's how wedding photographers work. After enough weddings, anyone could take good photos.

Even though I have been through all this before, I still like this picture.

There's a girl at Kinoe junior high, a second year who is one of the funniest and loudest people I have ever met. She doesn't particularly like English, but she likes me, and whenever she sees me she screams my name. That includes in the supermarket, in my car, or any other place. It's cute. She is one of many students who hates being photographed. She's pretty though, and I had a feeling there was a good picture to be had. I persisted, and in a moment of hachimaki adjusting, I grabbed this picture, which I think is one of my better ones. She told me to delete it immediately, and all her friends told her it was very cute.

Of course, the folding mirror.

This girl is the star girl athlete, and she looks every bit the part in this picture.

The gym teacher, MC of the Undokai.

Two points about this picture:
1. It is about 15-20 minutes after everyone put on the hachimaki, and I count three girls still adjusting theirs.
2. Most every school has a reproduction of Rodin's The Thinker in the schoolyard. Strange, right?

While we were getting ready, I noticed an old jungle gym, old, rusted, and well used. I took a couple pictures that are thematically out of place but I like them and this is my soapbox, so here they are.

Again, thank you new lens.

Now usually I am not the type to post silly misspellings of English here, but this is just too good.

I wonder what that means? As far as I can tell it keeps water and that's it.

Again, the transferring of the flag.

And the piano music with the exercises everyone does.

This was something different. It was a hot sunny day, and two kids started acting strange and woozy, and they were pulled into the tent. They were overheating, and were sat down with a thermometer until they cooled back down to normal temperatures.

This kid waited impatiently. The moment his temperature read normal, he leapt off the chair and ran back into the field.

This girl had more problems. She came in looking flushed and then started shivering and rubbing her arms as if she was really cold. She put on her tracksuit and waited maybe an hour, and the she too went running back to the action.

The principals, regal in their administrative tent.

And now, just some pictures that I don't think need much explaining.

That says white (shiro) on the left and red (aka) on the right.

Ok, fine, I'm obsessed with the headbands.

The view behind the stands.

Feats of Strength:

Relay:

This is the single most amazing running face I have ever seen. If I saw this behind me, I would let him pass.

Folk dance with kindergarteners.

The last game was awesome. Seven truck tires were placed on a line in the middle of the field. On either side, third and fourth graders lined up, probably ten or twelve per team. When the start pistol was fired, the only rule was that they had to pull the tires to their side. No instructions as to who should go where, or how best to pull, so what you get was a sort of free-for-all tire pulling melee.

The kids got their pulling gloves on.

And then it was hauling time. I love those two kids in the foreground.

Things got pretty serious.

And that's it for the Undokai practice. On the 11th, I have to go to the real deal and most likely photograph it again. We'll see how that goes. I realize this post is a little late, but while it's Thursday here, it's still Wednesday in some parts of the world. See you on Friday.

Undokai: 2 Down, One And A Half To Go

2006-06-05T14:26:00.000+09:00

Before I begin, last time I mentioned that Neko has been making a habit of escaping when I open the door. She did it again Saturday, and this time Mori was around holding my camera, so here is me, taking that bad girl back inside.

So, the Undokai (sports day). Sunday was the big day for Higashino, and I was assigned to be the photographer. I was also assigned to be fifth leg of the 150m relay, but that's besides the point. I arrived bright and early, memory card empty, batteries charged, multiple lenses in tow. I took almost 350 pictures, but at the end of the day, I am not happy with them. I don't know what it is exactly, maybe just a number of things conspiring against me. The light was pretty flat and uninteresting for most of the day, the field was huge and the action took place in the middle, but really I don't know. I'm just making excuses. I think these pictures are frustratingly boring, but maybe I'm just bored with photographing these sports days. I don't believe that though, because I just got back from a full rehearsal at Kinoe, and I am really happy with the pictures I took there. It's a mystery, and a frustrating one at that. Either way, here are the pictures and the stories, and really it's not all bad. I'm just not thrilled with them.

Before anyone showed up, it was time to put on hachimaki - headbands. This is not so simple as tying it on your head, especially if you're a Japanese middle school girl. Looks and hair are very important considerations.

Inevitably, the folding mirror comes out for final hachimaki styling.

The gear gets rolled out, the balloons get taped up, the kids stake claim to their spots, and things start to come together in a busy and colorful way.

The too-cool-for-school third year boys find a place away from the other kids to hang out.

I wasn't the only one photographing everyone getting ready. I can perfectly imagine the picture that the teacher is taking, can you?

A couple kids took spills before the day even started. I think that bandage is an excellent fashion accessory. It looks perfect.

And then with a shot from the starter pistol, we were under way. The marching music started up, the flags were hoisted, and the regiments rolled out.

With the usual ceremonial transferring of the flags (I think I have seen the flags transferred more than 20 times now), the opening words, some more marching, and the clapping by the parents, we got started.

Like the military, there's a lot of hurry up and wait. Maybe it's a side effect of marching.

The Undokai was a combined elementary and middle school event, and the middle schoolers had the first race. They don't mess around with their cheerleading (giant flags waved by tiny children) or with their shouts of encouragement.

Shrill screams of encouragement is actually more like it.

Then it was time for the walking on backs of your classmates race. The funny part of this one is that after it was over, I saw a lot of nice dusty footprints on people's backs. It looked like someone had been going around karate kicking everyone in the back.

The elementary school kids do not mess around when it comes to their races. The boy with the bandage actually sort of broke down on the last straight, he lost his pace, drifted over into the next lane over, and then went crashing into a tent full of kid as he crossed the finish line. It was very dramatic. They gave him some green tea and he was ok.

Another part of Undokai is the recently graduated alums coming back to hang out and run in some races. More importantly is that they show up looking as cool as possible.

They never wear just sports clothes either. All these guys had to shed a hefty pile of jackets, pants, hats, and other accessories before they could run. The girls come too, but they do different events. We'll get back to them.

The first graders running - they are tiny.

Next up: feats of strength.

They look so relaxed, hanging out like that. Also, I need to tell you about that girl on top, we'll get back to her too.

Oh no! Crash!

Daaang. There's always some nice oohing and aahing when they pull off these kinds of maneuvers.

Don't forget the pyramids. I would show you the picture of this one all complete, but they collapsed right as the girl got on top. It wasn't very exciting; I was hoping for some serious toppling action.

I was walking around the field when I saw this excellent group of fans.

I don't know what to call the next race. It starts out as a three legged race, but every lap, each team adds a runner. At the end it's eight people and seven legs. The potential for gigantic meltdowns is enormous, so I love this one.

They really haul ass with just two people.

So, then I was photographing this team getting their sixth runner on, and I wasn't paying any attention to the group in the back. Watch what happened next though.

Ow! They took a pretty big spill, but they got right back up, got their sixth runner, and then finished the race without falling again. Nicely done, team red. In all my pictures of people falling (skateboarding, for example) whenever I have a picture of someone about to take a huge spill, there's always an older woman grinning in the background. Maybe it's always the same woman.

A little explanation for a silly picture. The PTA runs a race where they have to run, inflate a balloon, pop it by sitting on it, and then do some other silly thing that I can't remember. Either way it wasn't particularly exciting, except for when the balloons wouldn't pop. I think this is just a really funny picture.

This sports day was covered in full HDTV - better than what most major league baseball games get in the states. Oh Japan, I will miss your incredibly cool gadgets.

Check out the next bunch of athletes.

I think this is their coach. (Actually, I don't think that.)

Before the older ladies went on, there was another game. This one was basically chicken fights with rules. Groups of four elementary school kids made a stack and stuck three balloons on the backs of the supporters. Each team had to pop the other teams' balloons but protect theirs. If anyone reading this has ever played Mario Kart, you know how this works - I guess now we know where the idea for Mario Kart battle mode comes from.

So now we can get back to the old ladies and the graduated girls in one shot, because it's time for the folk dance. The folk dance is actually supposed to be an "Oklahoma style" dance, I guess it's kind of squaredance-ish, but frankly if you hadn't told me it was a dance from "okurahoma" - I would never have guessed.

The dance happens in a big circle, with the groups making their way around, men on the inside, girls on the outside.

The girl alums. They come to show off style too, but they can't run, because they are all showing off their shoes. Those are some awesome shoes. I like this picture because everyone looks like they are thinking something completely different.

The girl on the left looks like she can't believe she is doing something so pathetic on her weekend, and moreover, she is amazed to remember that she used to take this all so seriously. Boy holding her hand is totally embarrassed, and probably had a huge crush on this girl when she was still in school with him. Girl in the middle is my favorite. It's like she just realized how silly this whole thing is, but what could bring her down? Nothing as long as she's wearing those shoes. Boy on the right is just thinking "Is this almost over?"

Indeed it was almost over, at which point something really strange happened.

The old ladies took the field, in their fiery red polo shirts and yellow hand pom-poms, and danced the whole length of YMCA by the Village People.

It was surreal, and perhaps more so because not a single one of them was smiling. I wonder if they had any choice in this. They all did the dance though, out in the heat and humidity, in front of a couple hundred people.

Yeah, that was strange.

Now we can get back to that girl I pointed out earlier. I was sitting with her and two of her friends, and I started to listen in on their conversation. I had just taken a picture of them, and they were teasing her about something. It turns out they were teasing her about her skin. She has slightly darker skin than the rest of her friends, and while it's playful and among friends, they are constantly making fun of her for being darker. I asked them what they were talking about and they pointed at her and said "black! black!"

How do you even begin to broach that subject with students whose extent of English is "How are you?" and "I'm hungry"? I had no idea. The girl in question is beautiful and a good athlete, and when I took a picture they were like "oh, I bet you can't see it because it's all black" and I just said "no, beautiful." I think more than anything else, she was just really embarrassed, but it is a nice picture, and this is my blow against low-level racism in Japan.

Enough seriousness, this is my blow against people who don't like cute children.

Have at thee!

After the big jump rope...

...and another relay, the day started wrapping up.

The melodicas came out to play some songs.

The signal was sent to start the last race.

And like the tape says, we were finished.

Remember these pictures, so you can see how much better the next ones are on Wednesday.

Caught up!

2006-06-02T23:27:00.000+09:00

It took two weeks, but I did it. I am finally current with my photos, and after this mini-post is online, I will have no pictures sitting in my collection, waiting to be posted. Of course this Saturday I'm going to Takehara, Sunday is a sports day, and then Monday is a sports day practice and teacher's party, so this is short lived. But for now, here are the last ones.

First, no big surprises, more sports day practice, this time at Kinoe junior high. They have the school right on the water, and I love watching the boats go by while I should be paying more attemtion to the class.

Again, the awesome gym outfits, and the fast ferry in the background.

Tomoka Maeda - this girl is afflicted by some mysterious malady, and so does not participate in sports. Somehow she is almost fluent in English. Her tiny voice, thin hands, and general weakness give her malady a very classical victorian feel. In my mind she has something with a dramatic archaic name, like consumption.

Then it was my birthday party! I turned a big 23 years old, and Mori and his friends threw me a party. It was a really fantastic time, one of the best birthday parties I've ever had, and while I took a lot of pictures, some more incriminating than others, I'll just post a few. I was struggling with this, because there are some pictures I like, but it seems silly to blog your birthday party on what is otherwise a blog about living in Japan. I guess this is a part of that, so here are a few.

Party food, Japan style. Japan has some of the most delicious draft beer. It's called nama beer, literally "raw beer."

The old man in question.

The party-thrower.

After the restaurant, we went to a bar. It was actually this guy's birthday too. Same age, same day. My Japanese twin brother.

Takenobu's awesome ink.

Then things started getting silly. The mama-san sent us over a bottle of wine as a birthday present, we started drinking higballs, and the karaoke controller started passing around. Soon, we were from laughing and having a good time to this:

That pretty much sums up the evening.

From there it all gets a little fuzzy in my mind. Someone from the bar drove us to another bar, and I took some pictures.

More drinks were had, some people fell asleep where they sat, and then we got a ride home at around three in the morning.

Towards the end of the night - staggering to the inevitable hangover.

And that's recent events. Today I got home and my cat has been making a habit of watching me come up the steps and then timing her escape with the moment I open the door. Usually I am carrying camera, bag, groceries, and some other stuff, so I am in no position to stop her. She doesn't go far, and so I followed with the camer after I put my stuff down.

After a little exciting looking around on her part, I brought her back inside.

Where she showed her true stripes as a cute but lazy cat.

Guest comment from Leila: do you notice that there are FOUR pairs of scissors in the picture of neko yawning? why do you need four pairs?

Next post will be on Monday or Tuesday depending on the pictures I have from the weekend. Don't forget - the map!

Some Silly Pictures

2006-06-01T11:03:00.000+09:00

I've actually gotten caught up a lot faster than I thought I would. I'll be caught up to what's on my computer by Friday, then Saturday and Sunday I may take more pictures, which I'll get up on Monday and Wednesday. If I only have one day's worth of pictures though, I might actually get a break. I don't know what I'd do with the time.

Thank you to everyone for adding yourselves to the map. We've got a pretty good spread here, if you haven't added yourself yet - please do.

So here are a few more pictures of Higashino's Undokai practice. Like I said earlier, I'm starting to get a sort of deep fatigue at the mere thought of photographing these things, but this weekend is the real deal, and I'm hired as official photographer (and 150m relay runner.) We'll see how both of those go. In the meantime, a few photos.

I when I go home I'm really going to miss the uniforms.

They were practicing the "big jump rope" which is exactly what it sounds like. A big bunch of kids jump over a big jump rope. It doesn't sound interesting, but there's great potential for humor.

The kids get way off the ground, and they can usually go for ten or twenty jumps.

That kid on the far left especially. Woah.

As I started taking more pictures, I noticed what was happening to the kids' hair. Something about Japanese hair bounces perfectly, and if you can catch it just right, it's hilarious.

That girl in the back left is trying to figure out what I'm photographing.

And she just figured it out.

I dunno. There's just something inherently funny about 20-odd Japanese middle schoolers jumping in unison in the middle of dusty field.

Boys face one way, girls face the other.

The rope spinner has a tough job.

But he doesn't let it get him down.

A couple days later I was back for combined elementary and junior high marching practice. This is always a little strange for me, because with the military marches, the flags, the formations, and the shouted commands - it all feels a little military, except for the fact that there are seven year olds marching. When one teacher asked me what I thought of all the marching, I said I thought it all felt very military and he thought about it for a second, and then told me that really the military's marching was much better, especially the Chinese army's high stepping. Then he demonstrated some high stepping for me.

Like Nobu at Nishino elementary, Higashino has a few kids who are severely disabled but participate in every event and class.

Whee! Fun! Sports day! - and this is just the practice.

Thank you for the fun, sports day.

After the practice I had to grade some notebooks. The kids do a page every night, and usually I'm just correcting spelling and handwriting when they copy the day's lesson, like this:

But then I came to a book that had this:

The lesson did deal with yesterday, today, and tomorrow - but how does one grade a translation of Yesterday Once More? In a related point of interest, the principal of the school, a somewhat stuffy older man, has Yesterday Once More as the ring tone on his baby blue cell phone. Whenever he gets a call (and he gets a lot of calls) the phone sings "every sha-la-la-la, every wo-o-wo-o" - which is about the funniest thing in the world.

Return to Routine

2006-05-29T17:16:00.000+09:00

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If you are reading this blog, I'd like to ask you to do me a favor. If you could take a second to add yourself to this map, I would appreciate it. I am curious to see where my readers are coming from. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes. Thanks

So, recently I passed 10,000 pictures taken in Japan. I thought that was a big number, and I left it at that. Today at work I was bored though, and I did some math. I have averaged 1,100 pictures per month, almost 40 pictures a day. That is ridiculous, especially considering there are plenty (ok, not plenty, but some) days where I don't take any pictures at all. Looking at those numbers and the number that I've posted on this blog (somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000) - it seems like anyone could post a good photo blog if they only posted one out of every hundred pictures they took. Oh well, I apologize if I ruined the magic of Ben in Japan, but life goes on. Speaking of the magic, people have been finding my webpage (I don't know how) and linking to it. Some of the pages recently linking here: This one, this one, and then the sidebar of this one.

So, when we last talked it was the most beautiful day ever, and now we are moving forward to the next day. I was meeting Theresa in Takehara, and driving to the ferry, I noticed it was incredibly clear. I don't know if it was the clearest day ever, but it was really remarkably clear. Usually there's a pretty noticeable haze between my island and Takehara, and as I got on the ferry, I took this picture.

This picture is perhaps more impressive to people who live on Osakikamijima, because they have a frame of reference. To everyone else, it's just a pretty landscape. I'm ok with that.

The ferry ride was lovely, and I imagine the fishing was too.

Oh, my island. Is three months out too early to be getting nostalgic?

Theresa is an English teacher from Kui-cho, a little town near Mihara. She wanted a tour of the island so I happily obliged. We went to the beach, and my car sat in a field of flowers.

I have to sell this car to the new teachers, I think I'll send them this picture - the car looks so happy!

We drove up to the top of the mountain (by that time it had hazed back up, so there was no spectacular view. When I had gone up with Mori the day before I had been in a hurry (to see the most beautiful day ever), but I had noticed a little sculpture by the road with some wild irises around it. I had forgotten about it, but going back up the next day, I stopped.

These little statues are all over on the mountain. I have heard a few things, but the most definitive is that they are pretty old, and when a mother loses a child, she makes clothes for the sleeping statue, making sure nothing happens to it. I don't know if this happens on a certain day, but a lot of statues have recently gotten new hats.

I have been shooting sports day practices, but no actual sports days. That is about to change, as every weekend for the next three weeks is booked solid with Undokai. The first one was a couple weekends ago, and of course, I took plenty of pictures.

This is Nishino Elementary, a 30 student school tucked between two mountains. It's my favorite elementary, and it's where Hatsune, my favorite photographic subject, goes to school. The kids are adorable, and the faculty bends over backwards to help me out. Also, the events at Nishino are always manageable because they only ever have 30 students, and 30 families attending.

This is a phenomenon I hadn't noticed before, but now I see it everywhere. There is a piece of piano music to which everyone does stretches. The stretches and the music are standard across all of Japan, and have been for a long time. I've seen it in movies, in gym class, and now at Undokai and Undokai practice. The neat thing about this time is sitting where I was, I could see that everyone in the stands knew it by heard. From the town officials to the grandmothers, everyone did the same stretches in time with the song. I have to get my hands on that music.

Then it was sports time.

I was not particularly interested in the sports photography aspect - My lenses are not really made for it, and other than the running, the sports were not particularly photogenic. So instead, you get a cute kid attack. Brace for cuteness.

Nene.

Maho, in cheerleading gear. This is the Maho who cried with her unicycle - you'll find out why soon.

Cheerleading. (Ouendan in Japanese)

This is Rena. She is one of the most strikingly beautiful kids at Nishino, but she is tough to photograph.

Rena again.

Hatsune, my favorite model.

Hatsune again.

And again, with my sunglasses. The deal with this one was that after, she got to take a picture of me.

Me.

Kazuya. Sharp as a tack, and he's going to be the popular kid when he gets a little older.

Anyway, back to the sports.

The relay.

So, maybe you remember this picture. It was of Maho, she was crying hysterically, and I didn't know why. As the unicycle portion of the program came up, I noticed she was looking less cheery and more despondent.

And I figured it out. Every elementary school on this island, and I'm guessing most in Japan have unicycles as standard recess gear. This kids just work it out, and maybe 90 percent of them can get around anywhere on their unicycles. They can play catch, hold hands, race, do hills, all manner of things. Maho can't. No matter how much she tries, she can't get the balance down, and ends up losing it after maybe 20 or 30 feet. Falling on a unicycle, at least when these kids do it, is a pretty minor affair, you just hop off and the unicycle falls, but still, she was incredibly frustrated.

As the time to go got closer, she looked less and less happy. Teachers gave moral support.

And then it was time to go.

The did all kind of uni-feats, with a few spills.

For the last event, they did an 11 person line of unicycles. These kids are impressive.

I would love to report that Maho did perfectly, but that wouldn't be realistic. She did have some very nice rides that got cheers from the kids and parents alike, but it wasn't perfect. Everyone cheered when she finished her ride. I love the way she's holding that hand as she rides back to the tent. With that, the Undokai was over, and I headed home to start dealing with the 300 odd pictures I had taken. I think I have a problem.

See you Wednesday.

The Most Beautiful Day of My Life

2006-05-26T17:27:00.000+09:00

I have less than half the time it usually takes me to write a full-length post, but I need to get this up before my boss takes me drinking (seriously, the scariest thing ever.)

So about a week ago it was grey and rainy all day. There were those great clouds down in the mountains, and I enjoyed out the windows of school while I was at work. As I drove home, I noticed that I could see the top of Kannomine (the big mountain on the island) above the low clouds I like so much. I decided it would be a good idea to drive up, and see if I could see anything from up high. I called Mori and told him to stop cleaning his nets and come with me. I picked him up and we were off.

On the way up, we saw this. I thought it was beautiful, so I took a picture. I had no idea what was in store.

As we went up higher and higher, it got grey and foggy as we went into the cloud. I figured that was probably what we would see at the top as well.

I was wrong. As we reached the top, on one side we couldn't see much, but when I turned around and looked across the parking lot, this is what I saw.

Mori and I both took pictures and decided the trip had been a success. We decided to look off to the right, which involved walking down a path and getting to my secret spot to see the sunset.

Even along the path was pretty amazing. Huge flocks of crows circled on rising currents of air, and in the distance it was crystal clear.

Ron was with us too.

As we came around to the sunset spot, nothing really prepared us for the view. I expected some more clouds, maybe some islands. What I got was this:

Pretty good, right? Wait.

We stopped and stared. The clouds rolled slowly, breaking like waves over the mountains, blowing in the wind. The view changed every minute.

As we stood there, it started lightening. Breaks started appearing in the clouds, and a couple rays of sun hit the clouds covering the island. For what it's worth, my house is down there in the middle right somewhere. It was raining and foggy down there.

It kept changing, minute by minute. The clouds started breaking apart, and the sun got brighter and brighter.

Standing here and watching this, Mori and I were speechless. There really is nothing you can say to a view like this. We just sat in silence and watched it change.

Meanwhile, off to the left, this was the view of Shikoku.

It just kept getting better. A view like this isn't fair - it's too beautiful. I'm spoiled now.

As we watched, the clouds opened up fully and bathed the island in sunlight.

The clouds started evaporating, rising up in long tendrils and disappearing.

Seriously. Can you believe this? I still can't.

The few words we did find while we were watching this were about how it was too bad that photographs could never capture what we were seeing. It's true. These are fine pictures, but what we saw was more beauty than I knew existed. It was breathtaking in a literal sense. As I sat watching this change, I found my heart beating quickly, my mind telling me to remember this, because it wouldn't last.

Just look at that horizon. Between the layers of clouds it was perfectly clear, and in the distance we could see the sun shining through other breaks.

I couldn't ask for a single thing to add to this scene.

The clouds started clearing over my neighborhood. I still sort of chuckle in disbelief when I look at these pictures.

The sun passed over, and the clouds were nearly gone. A new wind picked up and started blowing them off the mountains.

Above us, the sky was a deep blue.

And just like that, it was over. The whole thing, from the moment we got to the parking lot to the end, was probably no more than fifteen minutes. We were just phenomenally lucky, there's no other explanation for it. When I think about this sort of chance happening, I am torn. On one hand I am crushingly sad at the thought that I'm leaving this behind, but I'm also so glad that I had a chance to see this and share it with someone.

As we went back to the parking lot, I noticed there still was no view off the observation deck.

The view off the left was completely obscured by cloud. One stubborn cloud remained stuck to the wind shadow of the mountain, and it was right against the parking lot. The view over that railing is this:

Insanity.

As we pulled out, you could see the cloud blowing in over the railing.

That's good right? The most beautiful day ever? I was ready to call it a day and have good dreams, but that wasn't it. I had been home all of ten minutes when Mori called me and asked me if I wanted to go fishing with him, his father, and his father's friend. Of course, I said yes.

We got on the water as the sun was starting to go down. The low clouds had cleared, but a thick cool layer of fog still lay across the water. We headed out into the sun, and I had that same feeling - the one where you can't believe what you are seeing because it's so beautiful.

Above us was clear, with sharp clouds lit by the setting sun, but all around was the fog, spilling over islands and rushing around us.

Looking back home.

I used to constantly be pointing my camera at the sky and taking pictures of clouds, and I haven't done it in a while. I'm not sure why, but when you get a sky like this, you photograph it.

I was standing right at the bow of the boat, the water was rushing under me, the fog was making my face cool and damp, and the late afternoon sun was shining on me. I don't really know what else I could have asked for.

That wasn't it either. As we came to where we were going to fish, suddenly we broke out of the fog. It got hot and humid instantly. My lens and glasses fogged up immediately, We were in a circle of clear air, surrounded by a wall of fog.

I don't know what one says for pictures like these. Maybe just "wow."

As the sun set, the sky took on some very Hudson River School painting qualities. I feel like I can't emphasize enough how much a photo doesn't do this justice. It struck me dumb.

Also, I caught two fish.

Mori was not immune to it either. As we headed back, he positioned himself for maximum viewing pleasure.

As it got darker, we turned the lights on, and it didn't stop being beautiful.

Back in the fog, navigating to the dock.

The ferry port in the fog, arriving back home. What a way to end an absolutely incredible day.

It wasn't the most beautiful day in terms of the most lovely weather. For most of the day it rained and was pretty cold, but in terms of what I saw and the way I was able to appreciate it, I have never in my life had a day that comes close. I think it must be really rare to have a day like this, and it's something I hope I'll never forget.

I like how this Monday-Wednesday-Friday thing is working out. I'm going to keep it going next week, and until I get caught up.

Two Schools, and Battles in the Home

2006-05-24T17:44:00.000+09:00

This is going to be a quick update - I'm just back from work, and I've got a little birthday party soon. Thank you to everyone who sent me e-mails and messages, I suppose I am older now.

Last week I had some free time at Nishino Elementary school, a tiny elementary with 30 students, and I went out into the schoolyard with the third and fourth graders. I wanted to use the new lens a bit more, and the kids at Nishino are incredibly cute. I'm sticking with the black and white for a bit.

Rina-chan. One of my favorites.

Maho-chan, hysterically crying while holding her unicycle. I didn't find out why she was crying until a couple days ago. Stay tuned and you can find out too.

My new favorite photographic subject. This is Hatsune-chan. She is a third grader who is cute, bright, and fearless. When I show up at school, if she sees me, she usually tries to tackle me. Sometimes she warns me not to take pictures of her. This is one of those occasions. Here are a few more of her.

My favorite one.

This one was mostly taken by accident. The lesson learned - take more pictures by accident.

This next picture is by a guest photographer.

I left my camera on my bed one day, and came home to find this picture on the card. I had no idea what had happened, and then I realized that while I was at work, Neko took this picture. Nice work, Neko.

The next school is Higashino Junior High. They are the same school that did the Hokkaido visit, and by an odd arrangement of outside events, my schedule, and the way the weeks line up with vacations, I'm there an awful lot. Now I've been hired (pro bono, but still, hired!) as the photographer for their Undokai - Sports Day. I've been to four practices now, and the actual Undokai isn't until June 4th, but I've photographed them all. This is an indoor one.

I love the kids' indoor shoes. Thin little sneakers with blue stripes on them, boys and girls all wear the same kind, most of them have their names written in kanji down the back.

They have this awesome race where one guy runs along the backs of his teammates, who have to keep sprinting ahead of him and making the bridge that he walks on. They usually have to go through some figure eights and such, and they have to wear a special outfit. The kid on the right has just about a perfect runner's pose, no?

They use a regulation-length long bamboo pole to stabilize themselves.

Next up was feats of strength. I'm not sure how else to describe them. One teacher suggested "Tumbling" but that's not quite it.

Are you noticing that every single teacher and student has an awesome track suit? I definetly need to get one.

The human pyramid. They are really super serious about their human pyramids here, usually a kid stands on top, ten or more feet off the ground. They do come crashing down quite often too, I tried to photograph it, but the dim light in the gym made them all blurry. Trust me, it's a site to see when one girl's elbow just gives out and the whole thing caves into a writhing mass of arms, legs, and shrieks.

I will post one more set of pictures from rehearsals, and then you'll get to see the actual Undokai - won't it be fun? Today I photographed marching practice, and I started feeling Undokai photography fatigue. There are only so many ways you can photograph kids on a sandy field marching in formation around a track to bombastic music.

In other news, I woke up a few days ago and found what at first looked like a giant ball of lint on my floor. When I went over to it, I found that it was not a ball of lint at all, but a giant spider - the latest victim of my awesome, awesome cat.

That is a huge, hairy spider. the watch is there for scale.

My cat - too cool for school.

After determining that she didn't want to eat it, I threw the spider out the window, where it may have broken the car windshield it landed on.

As a note to end on, this may be odd - but isn't this just the nicest package of mushrooms you've ever seen?

I've been excited to post Friday's pictures since the day I took them. Stay tuned.

Nakatonbetsu Visits

2006-05-22T21:10:00.000+09:00

Fates have conspired to delay this posting, but I will not be delayed. Through wind and rain, 50 First Dates (who knew that was such a good movie? Don't spoil it, I haven't finished it yet), a demanding cat, and laundry - I am here. Where to begin. First, I was at Kinoe Elementary, and there were cute kids. I took some pictures.

That kid in the back was jumping up and down.

Ok, next. Higashino Junior High had a fun event a couple weeks ago. They have a sister school in Hokkaido (kind of like the Alaska of Japan), and the third years from that school (Nakatonbetsu Junior High) came down for a visit. There was a day of music and games and visiting sites on the island planned, but like any event of importance, there were rehearsals. I attended the final rehearsal the day before the visit.

Everyone has a pen case. They are pretty awesome, that orange juice one for example - there's liquid inside. Tip it one way and the juice flows out of the oranges into the bottle. Rad.

The Assistant Principal - he looked tired.

He was tired. This picture is full of everything I love about shooting in black and white.

The melodica brigade, of course.

After some suitably bombastic music, the rehearsal was over. We headed our separate ways, and luckily I was scheduled to be at Higashino the next day so I could meet the Hokkaido kids. On my way home, I saw the Maritime University kids out doing drills in their life boat.

The next morning I was awoken not by my alarm, but by the town loudspeaker, announcing that due to heavy fog, the ferries would not be running for the time being. They didn't say anything about school being closed, so I got ready and headed to work on a rainy grey day. I got to school, and found all but three teachers were absent - seven or eight of them live in Takehara and other cities on the mainland. The teachers who were there were struggling to get ready for the visit and ceremony. As we hurried down to the gym to get ready, one of the teachers saw that I had my camera and said "Ben! bring your camera." And thus I became the official photographer of the Nakatonbetsu visit. Here are a selection of the pictures.

Nakatonbetsu had way cooler gym uniforms than Higashino Junior High. Many introductions were read.

Nakatonbetsu also had snazzy dance moves and nice dancing jackets.

Higashino wins for dramatic poses though. A bunch of semi-successful games were played to get the kids to interact with each other. I say semi-successful because the kids did everything in their power to avoid interacting with the visitors. They are middle-schoolers after all, no middle schooler likes meeting new people.

Observe the lines of sight as the human knot is undone. Green jackets look at green jackets, Hokkaido kids strain and look outwards.

Another knot is undone without eye contact. I like this picture, I feel like this kid's pose is a metaphor for some difficult political situation.

Slowly the kids became slightly less nervous. A we played a few more games, the bombastic music was performed, and then it was on to the Hiroshima Maru.

The Hiroshima Maru is the training boat for the Maritime college. It is a training boat as in they practice all the stations in a boat on it, and take it out for short trips on the inland sea, but it's more than that - every student, as a condition of graduating, travels around the world working on the ship. They navigate, operate the engines, dock in dozens of cities, maintain the ship, and then bring it back home. It's a pretty cool thing, and it makes me a little jealous of the students. Anyway, we got a tour of it. I don't know if Nakatonbetsu is landlocked or what, but they were impressed with the size and fanciness of the boat.

It is large and fancy.

It was also pouring rain and really foggy. The principal made his way to the boat in a very Japanese wood-block print style.

We got a tour:

Damn. Those are some awesome binoculars. Also in this picture, you can see the fog which was preventing the ferries from running.

The bridge on the Hiroshima Maru was impressive - high-tech, clean, and big. It also had this, which I think is about the coolest thing you could have on a boat's bridge.

Next: down to the engine room.

That's the engine on the right - it was really impressive.

Can't get enough of their track suits.

Doesn't this look like some sort of promotional photograph? It could be titled "The learning moment."

And just like that, the tour was over. We headed to the Higashino town office for lunch. It was pouring rain.

The fog and the clouds had about forty feet between them. On the water there was no gap.

This is the Nakatonbetsu bus, and that's the fog that was keeping them on the island.

We had lunch, and lunch was kind of a disgrace at first. I sat with two boys from Higashino, and three from Nakatonbetsu. After forty minutes of the Higashino boys talking to each other and completely ignoring the boys from Hokkaido, I gave up on trying to get them to talk and got up to take pictures. Two Hokkaido boys came with me.

One stayed and looked miserable.

I ended up going over to the Hokkaido teacher's table to meet some of them and the boys came with me. Away from the impossible Higashino boys, I got to talking with the boys from Hokkaido and their teacher.

As it turns out, they were huge New York Knicks fans. I really let them down when I told them I didn't follow the NBA. They proceeded to tell me (with a little translation help from their teacher) about how badly the Knicks did last season. The were hopeful for next season. I also found out about their foreigner English teacher, Scott from Kansas. Apparently Scott is not very cool. For whatever reason, every question I answered about myself was cool. "Where are you from?" "New York." "Cool! Big city! Awesome!" (in Japanese, of course), that was not so surprising. When my name got a similar response, I was a little surprised. I guess there is a basketball player named Ben. Either way, they decided we need a picture to commemorate the awesome time we were having.

I post this picture just as a point of interest. For boys in Japan, there is no taboo about physical contact, and so you'll often see boys with their arms around each other, or sitting on each other's laps. It's kind of nice.

The plan was to catch the 2:00 ferry, but there was some question about whether the ferry would be running by 2:00. At the last minute it turned out it was, and so we headed down to the ferry port.

The big plan was to stretch colored paper ribbons out over the water as the ferry pulled away.

But then it started pouring.

The ribbons disintegrated, the Hokkaido kids hid from the rain, and the plan fell apart.

The photographer retreated to what turned out to be no shelter at all.

I waved to my new friends and they shouted "Ben!" and waved. It was nice.

The rain let up a little bit and they decided to try it again. They passed ribbons and the ferry pulled away before anything could happen.

The Hokkaido kids are all in the dry ferry now, but the poor Higashino kids were soaked to the bone. My camera stopped focusing for a bit, but then it dried right out. I spent the next half hour driving kids back to school in my tiny car, three at a time.

It seems that I have been ending posts with a picture of fog recently, so I will finish with this one, from the end of that day.

See you Wednesday for a birthday blog update.

Catching Up

2006-05-21T16:52:00.000+09:00

I've been trying to figure out how I've fallen so far behind so quickly. It seems that every time I post, I've gotten further behind, not less. Last week blogger photo uploads went out for a few days, and when it finally came back up two days ago, I realized I have material for six or seven blog posts waiting to get online. I was trying to figure out why that is, and I realized it's not because I'm not posting, it's because I've been doing so much. The oldest photos, the ones I am posting today - are a couple weeks old. I've been doing more, and I've finally reached the point where I feel comfortable taking pictures anytime. I bring my camera everywhere, but now instead of leaving it in my bag, I keep it ready at my desk. If someone sticks their head into the teacher's room and says "Ben-sensei, come here" I grab my camera and go. The students are used to me with the camera, the teachers have no problem with it (mostly because when I take pictures, I always put them on a school computer for them to use on their homepages or newsletters.) Either way, I've been doing a lot, and taking a lot of pictures. I am now committing to getting them all up soon. I don't have any exciting plans this week, and with any luck I'll be able to write and post three updates this week, after this one. Let's see if I can do Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Good luck to me.

When we last left off with our bold adventurer, he had returned after a semi-successful road trip to Shikoku, and it was the middle of the Golden Week vacation. Not wanting to sit around for the rest of the vacation, Ben and Liz agreed to meet up in Hiroshima City the next day and take a trip to Miyajima, the island of the famous red gate in the water. You'll recognize it when you see it.

We actually ended up spending a chunk of time in Hiroshima (It's a lovely city.) We got lunch, and then Liz declared that she was ready to buy a new digital camera (possibly because I had given her no end of grief about her tiny old point and shoot in the 30-odd hours we had just spent in a tiny car.) We went to Deo Deo and browsed. After much hand-wringing and perusing of brochures in Japanese, Liz bought a new Digital SLR. Excellent choice, Liz. By about 2:30 or 3:00, we finally got on the streetcar to Miyajima. About an hour later, we got on the ferry to the island.

So yeah, Miyajima - it's got a bunch of temples, a Kabuki theater, and the famous Torii in the water. What I didn't really know about was the deer. Miyajima has a large population of docile deer that walk the streets and sights along with the tourists. It's decidedly strange, these big animals just strolling around like everyone else.

Miyajima appears to have a giant temple - I wouldn't know, we didn't actually make it there.

...because I was keeping my eyes on the gate. It's famous, often photographed, used in all manner of publications, but it still manages to impress. It's a beautiful graceful thing, sitting out in the water.

There's a temple complex on the water, the whole thing is on stilts and sits over the water at high tide. We didn't go at high tide, but it must be really beautiful.

The Kabuki theater.

The advantage of the semi-low tide is that you can walk out to the water and stand close to the gate. Also, you can look through the sand for treasure. I think this is possibly the most picked-over beach I have ever seen. The odds of finding treasure are very slim.

I have about a hundred more pictures of the gate, but I'll spare you. My absurd travel needs (street car to the bus, bus to the ferry, ferry to the island, scooter to my house, bicycle to volleyball practice) meant we would be wise to start heading back around 4:30 so I could get home by 7:00. We decided to play the odds and left the beach at 5:00.

The street going back was kind of wonderful. Big folding paper awnings are stretched across the top of the street, leaving a sort of diffuse light on the old shops that line the street.

Miyajima must be famous for oysters, because in more than one place, an old lady would sell you oysters freshly charcoal grilled. Yum. (This picture is for you, Fred.)

Back on the streetcar, I was tired. I was not the only one.

That's the corner of Liz's new camera on the right.

Earlier in the day, while Liz had been camera shopping, I was looking at lenses. I tried out a 50mm f/1.4 lens, and I was thinking about it all day. Time was tight, but before I caught the bus home I ran to Deo Deo and bought it. It's fast and sharp and I'm really happy with it. It has a tiny little depth of field, which makes it tough to shoot with, but great for portraits. Here are three of the first photos I took with it.

What? I didn't say portraits of people.

This was going to be the end of the blog update, but in the interests of catching up, I'm bringing in the next update right here.

Chapter 2: In which Mori sets up a skate competition, and there is much rejoicing.

On the last day of Golden Week, there was an Osakikamijima skate contest. Mori had been telling me about it for a long time, and while it was nearly cancelled by rain, good fortune prevailed, and we had a great time. There isn't a terrific amount to say, and I think the pictures speak for themselves pretty well.

Setting up.

Mori.

Two of my students, and their dad, who skates with them. It's awesome, they love skateboarding and he has taken it up so he can do it with them. They skate down by Mori's boat.

Any skate competition has mishaps, more so when all the skaters are really really nervous because their girlfriends and parents are there.

Do you see that woman under his right foot? She is grinning ear to ear.

Takenobu. Ow.

When things work, it looks good.

Mori.

And again - Mori. That skateboard is upside down!

Takenobu

The devoted fans.

The youngest fan - actually the youngest fan was with her mom. But this is her ride.

Voting for a winner after the competition.

Two photos of Akira, the annoucer/DJ/competitior.

The winner (left), his prize (left top), and the donor of the prize (right). Thumbs up (bottom right).

The crew. A long long time ago, I was looking at the family photo album of a photographer I know. In that album there was a group picture where everyone in the group looked good. I remember thinking that I had no idea how that was possible, because everyone knows that when you take a group picture, someone looks stupid. I think I might have just cracked it. Thank you, new lens.
On the way home, I stopped three or four times to take pictures of the thick fog that was rolling in across the water. At the time I had never seen anything like it before, I didn't realize we were simply at the beginning of the foggy season here. There's been a lot of really spectacular fog recently, stay tuned and you'll see more.

That guy on his boat - I couldn't have asked for anything more perfect.

See you Monday.

I Went To Shikoku (Shikoku Ni Ikimashita)

2006-05-14T14:49:00.000+09:00

Golden Week: The first week of May, a Japanese national holiday, prime vacationing time for a huge number of Japanese, and a smaller number of foreign English teachers in Japan. People across Japan go sightseeing, camping, road tripping, and travel to foreign countries. I decided not to take a huge trip, not feeling up to the phenomenal amount of planning and organizing required for another international sojourn. I had been to Shikoku with my parents and we had seen a bit of it, but I wanted to go back. At the last minute, Liz and I decided to take a road trip, staying in business hotels along the way, no real plan or route. We left Wednesday morning.

I literally drove to Shikoku, across the inland sea. Actually, this is right before backing onto the ferry.

Last time I went, I mentioned driving along a beautiful gorge, and I completely forgot to take pictures. I said you should imagine pine trees growing out from giant boulders, with clear turquoise water rushing down between giant mountains. I tried to get it this time.

Scale is really tough - the biggest of those boulders are probably twice as big as my car.

It's beautiful country, to be sure.

It's also treacherous country.

Along the gorge we kept passing small roads and I finally decided to turn off on one - they were so tempting. We went up through a little town and found a windy mountain road. After fifteen minutes we came to a waterfall and a little bridge.

And we kept going up.

After 20 minutes we started talking about what purpose this road could possibly serve. We were heading up into what appeared to be empty forested mountains, and a lot of asphalt had been laid for what seemed like no reason. Finally we reached one house, and we agreed that the 20 minutes of narrow switchbacks was pretty ridiculous as a road to a single house. The road kept going up, and so did we. After maybe 15 more minutes, we came around a bend and found an amazing and picturesque village. An old lady walked along the old stone wall on the side of the street with a basket full of vegetables, small houses were perched on the side of the mountain, and a dog stopped what it was doing to watch us drive by. The town went off above us to the right, and to the left was an immense view of the valley we had just been driving in. Once we passed the middle of the town, we pulled over and got out to look at the town we had just passed through.

This is the only way I could possibly try to show what it was like standing in this town. The road on the very bottom in the center is where we were driving along before we turned off. You can actually see the river I photographed earlier. The car is just poking in on the far far left. It's a bigger file than usual, so give it a second to load.

The road kept going after the town too, but we decided we had found the most wonderful thing on this road, and decided to head back down and go south.

When we got back to that waterfall though, we decided to get out and see if we could climb off the road and see the river a little closer up.

We could.

Up above the waterfall - a crystal clear pool, fed by a stream running down the mountain.

Something about the aesthetic of this rock, sitting in the middle of the river with a little tree growing out of it struck me as being particularly Japanese.

Places like this sort of make my mind reel. This was a nothing. A tiny stream running along a tiny road going to a nothing town on one of a million mountains in Japan's least populated major landmass. The number of people who have walked along this river in the last year is probably less than ten, and yet it is absolutely sublime. Does every tiny road in Japan pass through this kind of beauty without even stopping? Do even half of them? We probably passed almost two hundred little roads winding off into the mountains during the first few hours of driving, and when I think the amount of beauty and wonderful little moments on all those roads, I feel like I should make it my life's work to explore every little road in Japan. A life so full of beauty would be a rare thing.

Finally we reached Kochi city on the south coast. Here we planned to try and find a business hotel, grab some dinner, walk around, and then get an early start the next morning. Then things started to go south. We asked probably 20 or 30 hotels if they had room, and they did not. After canvassing the entire hotel district, we walked back to the car and decided to look in the next city over, Nankoku.

We did get a nice view of Kochi castle on the way out.

We got to Nankoku and asked five or six more hotels every single one was full up, and most had a line of people waiting to ask for rooms. This did not bode well. I figured this was spillover from Kochi, so we decided to head east and look in the smaller cities along the coast. You can imagine what happened. More hotels, and more cities later, a helpful hotel attendant told Liz that all the hotels from Kochi east were full. Lines were forming at no-reservation love hotels, it was getting close to 9:00. We finally grabbed dinner at a highway restaurant, got gas at one of the few gas stations still open, and realized that we were going to be sleeping in the (tiny) car. We decided to head east so we'd at least have a head start in the morning. We reached Muroto, a city on a long peninsula on the Pacific and found a public parking lot. As we pulled in, we noticed at least four other cars parked with families sleeping inside. Seems we weren't' the only people to drop the ball in terms of planning.

Right next door, we had a fully stocked vending machine corner. Drinks, cigarettes, and possibly a hot ramen machine. Yum.

From where the car was parked we could hear the ocean, and eventually we fell asleep. It was not a marvelous night of sleep and at 5 am an incredibly loud siren went off to let everyone know it was time to start the day. Being in the driver's seat, with the key still in the ignition, I just lifted up the seat back, turned on the car, and pulled out of the parking lot when Liz was ready. A fitting beginning to what would end up being a 15 hours of driving.

A rice field near our parking lot.

In the morning, suddenly we could see what we had been driving along all this time. The Pacific stretched out towards the sunrise, giant waves crashing on even more giant boulders, the smell of salt spray mixing with the flowers that lined the road. In the words of Liz, it was a lot prettier when we could actually see the ocean. We stopped in a few places to take in the view and walk down to the water.

In this picture, it is really hard to see the giant scale of things, so I put Liz in the next picture.

It's as though Shikoku is the land of really giant scale nature. Nothing is small here except for the people visiting.

Off in the distance the shoreline faded into mist and sea spray, but as we drove along an impressive sight showed up.

I don't know what those giant spires are exactly - but they were grand and impressive. One thing I love about Japan is that natural beauty is revered over almost anything else, and so this beautiful meeting of stone and sea was decorated with a Shinto rope and given a name.

The rock that makes up these pillars is really strange looking - we saw it here and there along the coast - it looks like something from another planet. These guys didn't mind though, they had fish to catch.

We kept driving.

Soon, we came into a surfing town. At this point it was almost 6 in the morning, but surfers were out in force. Dozens of vans converted for sleeping filled a field next to the town's one convenience store. Bunches of young cool guys and girls waxed their boards and stretched before heading to the water. The sun started peeking through the haze and across a long beach we could see the waves. We grabbed some rice balls from the convenience store and headed down to the beach to sit and have breakfast.

The convenience store parking lot.

The surf hotel right on the beach.

Bear in mind that it is now six in the morning. At six am, there are already hundreds of surfers at the lineup.

...and lots more just getting in.

It was a beautiful morning for surfing, a light offshore wind, a good swell...

...and one of the most beautiful surf spots I've ever seen.

We ate our onigiri and watched some surfers, and then we headed back to the car. Soon after the surf town, we turned away from the ocean and headed to the Iya Valley - an area known for it's amazing scenery.

Not that you ever need to go anywhere special for amazing scenery around here.

There is a long and unpleasant story about how we drove along this road until it became a single crumbling lane, a narrow mountain pass, and then after an hour and a half of treacherous mountain driving, we came to a barricade that told us that the road had been closed due to falling rocks. Then there's the other story about how I melted and nearly set fire to the car's brakes on the way back down. Both of those stories are irrelevant. We came back along this road three hours later, in the other direction.

This was the view from the top, where the barricade was.

Being back on the ocean road put us back on the 88-temple pilgrimage route, so we stopped at a temple along the way.

It was number 23 of 88, I believe.

Some pilgrims getting ready to get back on the road.

Being back along the ocean had some benefits, namely a spectacular view. Mori saw this picture and told me that this town is famous because of that bridge. The bridge is new, but there has been a bridge there for a long time. It used to be an old wood bridge with "a lot of history - many stories."

Japan has a mystifying new campaign to stop smokers. I'm not exactly sure if it works in translation.

Oh, also the temple was not bad.

Hey! That's not a very nice thing to say, bench.

Each pilgrim coming through planted a stick of incense here.

After this town we had an excellent lunch of udon, and headed back inland towards the Iya Valley - we never actually reached the valley proper, but the landscape became quite impressive.

This looks fake, doesn't it? Like some amusement park idea of what a perfect waterfall should look like. It's not. It's just another thing we drove by. "Hey, look out the window - it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen."

We came through a tunnel that was just a hole hacked into a mountain (you can actually see it - a dark hole in the mountain on the left in this picture) we came out into this immense gorge, whose scale and grandeur is entirely lost in photographs. I think the scale of Shikoku is one of the hardest things I've ever tried to photograph.

Nope - you still can't see how amazing it was.

We drove along this gorge for a while, a road so narrow than if a car came towards you, you had to back up and put your outside wheels right along the edge of the cliff (no guardrails, obviously) just to make room for another car to go by. Once, when we were doing this, we were backing up with another car and they had all but an inch of their left back tire hanging off the edge of the cliff. Liz screamed and I honked the horn and they stopped. It was a close one. The car coming in the other direction made it by. At one point we had a tight squeeze with my four-foot wide car going in one direction and a motorcycle going the other way.

Through another tunnel and we were out of the gorge and out to the biggest view yet (and probably one of the biggest I've ever seen. Again, completely impossible for me to photograph, and almost worthless for you to look at on your little computer monitor, but only almost worthless.

When I lean close to the computer and look at this picture, I can get just a faint whiff of the enormous distances and sizes I was looking at. No thanks to blogger who compress my pictures for me and cause the distance to become all blurry. Actually, you know what? Here's a bigger higher-quality one, in case you want to lean into your computer screen.

From there we headed back. We got on Shikoku's one highway, and found even than to be beautiful.

(Thanks to Liz for taking this picture for me.)

We missed the last ferry back, so we took the giant multi-bridge back to Honshu (the mainland).

From there, I dropped Liz in Mihara, drove back to Takehara, caught the last ferry home, got home at 10:30, and passed dead out.

A Busy Day

2006-05-07T12:07:00.000+09:00

It started out at Higashino Junior High.

After a morning of teaching, we had activity time, and I chose to go along with the Science adventure group. We went out into the bamboo forest behind the school to dig up takenoko - literally bamboo child - bamboo shoots. It's the season for fresh takenoko, and we went to see them in their natural habitat.

First we had to cross the one-student-at-a-time rusty bridge. Incidentally, the turquoise of the student's gym jackets seems to have broken my camera.

In the bamboo forest, the kids broke off into groups, looking for shoots, but also just looking around and enjoying the place.

Takenoko: found!

I partook in the digging. Thank you to Mochizuki Sensei for taking this picture.

After that was done, I got in my car and went to Kinoe Junior high, where after a full day of classes we had neighborhood cleaning time. Every day at the end of the day Japanese students clean their school, but every now and then they have a special cleaning day where everything around the school gets cleaned. I was dispatched to the first year's cleaning, weeding and raking the roads around the school.

I want a Japanese junior high gym outfit.

She really didn't want me to take her picture, but I did, and now I am posting it on the internet.

My kids!

After school, I headed home and met up with Mori. We actually did time trials to and from Kinoe Junior High. There are three roads from my house to the school - they are all very different in length and terrain, but our times were 12:35, 12:30, and 11:44. The fastest one is actually the longest distance, and getting that time involved hitting 100 km/h on a winding coast road. I'll stick to the other roads, but it was a good time. The third trial left us back at Kinoe, so we stopped to look at the view off the far side of the island.

No sunsets here, they are in Osaki, on the other side.

What a handsome gentleman.

On the way back, Mori was playing with my camera and took a bunch of pictures that I really like - they are very evocative of driving on the island, and I'm glad I have them. Here are two of them.

Nice job, Mori.

Don't think for a minute that I'd miss the sunset though.

The next day I didn't do much other than heading down to the dock to see the Nakayoshi Maru off on a fishing trip...

...watering my flowers and clove of garlic I decided to plant...

...and hanging out with my cat.

A Sad Day, and Some Happy Ones

2006-05-02T19:28:00.000+09:00

I'm afraid I've got to start this one out with some bad news. In all my time with Mori, on his boats, at his house, with his family - there were always his two dogs, Maru and Ron. The dogs in the Nakamura family are wonderful and a central part of the family dynamic. Maru, the little golden Daschund who needed to be tossed across the gap onto the boats but always was very eager to sit in my lap, was hit by a car and killed. It's put a damper on things, and I was looking at my pictures of Maru and decided it would be good to put up a few to remember him by.

I'll miss that dog.

It feels odd to move on just like that, but I guess that's what one does in these situations. It's been busy here, but it's also been beautiful out, and I've been taking more pictures. The warm weather means that Mori and his crew (The Circus) have been out skating in the afternoons, and I occasionally head down there to hang out and take some pictures. I was thinking - there are a lot of skate parks in a lot of places around the world, but the little park that they have built down by the water - it's probably the skate park with one of the best views in the world.

Mori.

Takenobu.

Koichi.

A couple weekends ago, I went to Hiroshima for a party - for some reason every time I go to Hiroshima, I don't take any pictures, and this time was no exception. We went to a club full of Marines, which was an interesting way to spend the evening. On Sunday morning I got up after three and a half hours of sleep and took my pounding headache back to Takehara. Rather than wait for the ferry, I had made plans to go to Ikunoshima with Mori and his sister, and along with that plan came a personal boat ride from Takehara to our destination by Mori's new boat. It was very luxurious.

Ikunoshima is a little island next to Osakikamijima, you can see it here, the island in the center is Osaki, the little calliper/pac-man shaped green island to the top right is Ikunoshima. Ikunoshima has a population between 10 and 20, and is slowly being reclaimed by nature. It is a quiet and beautiful place, and we went for a nice two hour walk. First though, check out my ride, and where we parked.

It doesn't get much better than that.

We found a couple old loaders...

...and drove them, of course.

Mine had a nice natural canopy over it.

Mori's still had a key - he gave it to me as a present, it's sitting on my desk now.

The real reason we went to Ikunoshima was to see the cherry blossoms that are overgrown and underappreciated. In front of a possibly occupied house, we found these trees.

Ron checked out all the petals blowing around on the ground.

As this is the last cherry blossoms post I'll be making, it is only fitting that I should again defeat myself in the Ben Duchac flower photography competition.

Maru - these pictures are a little sad now.

Mori's sister Hiroko and the dogs. He had a happy life, at least.

Hiroko.

Rather than walk all the way around the island, we went back to the boat and drove around to the other side. The wind was coming up and the sky was getting dark - it was looking rather ominous.

Maru has such a cheery face on though.

The town on the far side of Ikunoshima - mostly empty, the only signs of life we saw were an old blind dog who barked at our sound, and an old woman who came out and calmed the dog down.

This is my best picture of the factory island yet - it just sits out there, waiting for me.

Mori, carrying Ron past the blind dog, and making a sweet face.

Ikunoshima is where I do all my car shopping. This low-rider hatchback has easy trunk access, a rearview mirror, and a huge aftermarket sunroof.

Heading home - it's not quite the tropical lagoon that we started at, but considering this is roughly my neighborhood, it's not all bad.

Hiroko took this picture from the cabin of Mori's boat. It wasn't raining, but the pockmarks in the Plexiglas made it look kind of stormy and surreal. I liked it, so here it is. Thank you Hiroko.

I'm off to Shikoku for a road trip for the next three days. Hopefully when I get back I'll have time to catch all the way up. Stay tuned.