The fifth treasure

This, my penultimate entry for this particular edition of my blog, finds me sitting at Mums in Australia, already dreaming ahead to my next adventure but trying to scrape back hazily through the busyness of the past few weeks to my last days in Japan.

After waking lazily in my nice hotel room, I borrowed a bike and headed off to find Nara Park and its famed deer, with whom I had a long-standing appointment. I managed to get lost on my way over there, not unusual for me but somewhat embarrassing in a town as small as Nara! I eventually found the paved tourist street heading up the hill and to my utmost delight found a shop devoted entirely to calligraphy products. I had spent the previous few weeks being frustrated by my inability to find places to buy supplies (not helped by my lack of linguistic and cultural understanding) and now found myself the kid in the proverbial candy store. Art supply stores are my favourite shops after bookstores, and this was one of the strongest Japanese ilk. A strong smell of sumi pervaded the air and took me to a bygone era steeped in tradition, as it does everytime I walk into the hushed stillness of my shuji classroom.

I was standing in this small shop, soaking up the lush zen-ness of the atmosphere and the close proximity of so many luxurious objects, when the store owner came gingerly over to ask if he could help. I was standing over the marble hanko stones, the stamps Japanese people use to sign their names; calligraphy ones are usually square instead of round and and engraved with an older style of kanji, the name of which I don't know. From a typographic design point of view, I like it much more than the standard kanji used for printing or the cursive style for writing.

Over previous weeks I had meticulously gathered a modest collection of ink, paper, brushes and a really nice ink stone, the "four treasures" needed for calligraphy, but a hanko was the one thing I had secretly wanted for a long time, but had never really been motivated enough to organise. Japanese friends and teachers had somehow infused with an idea that it was very difficult to organise and not really necessary. After we exchanged preliminaries over what I wanted, he must have sensed my unsure desire and he expertly guided me out to the back to his office whereby he managed to iron out all the problems of creating and delivering my hanko. He was really patient with my japanese and we methodically went through the logistics and costs involved of getting me my own original hanko.

The stones themselves vary in size but are usually about 5cm long with an engraved face about 1-2cm squared. The stones themselves are quite cheap, but the engraving of each character costs about $25 each, and most people have 2-3 characters in their name. It would take a week to 10 days to get the engraving done, and then he would send the finished product to my mum's house in Australia. I bought some of the firm red ink that sits in a beautiful Chinese style pot inside a beautiful box covered in green Chinese silk and he showed my how to use and care for my ink. After finalising everything and dumping it on my visa card, I tripped up the hill to meet my deer friends, happy with both my transaction and my ability to complete it in Japanese.

It was only the next day that I found out that Nara is considered the centre of calligraphy in Japan. Before running out to the airport in the evening I managed to find a different shop where I bought a book and some beautiful paper.

This is the finished result that I received in the post.

Freedom

Hard to believe it's 3 weeks since I became gainfully unemployed (even though I haven't worked for 6). This morning I had my last day of school, and I walked out of class with my laptop and a daypack and headed straight to the train station. Goodbye Okazaki. Not that I'm sad to leave this fine example of bland Japanese urbanity.


I took the slow trains to Nara, ensuring plenty of train hopping and amazing views of rice paddies and mountains once I got safely through Nagoya. The shinkansen is great for getting places efficiently, but there's something pleasant about sitting on local trains and watching the passing show of life hopping on and off before you. After two years of intense busyness it's nice to be entering a period where I have an abundance of time, and it makes not having an income totally worth it.

As if on cue, autumn arrived today. I may have mentioned before that seasons change in Japan with the flick of a switch, one day you just know that you're in a different season, just as ants know when it's going to rain. I could feel the countryside taking a fulfilled sigh of accomplishment and begin to relax, much like that moment at the end of a busy but productive day when you sit down after accomplishing everything you wanted to and feel a great wave a contented tiredness roll over you. That was today, and the sense of autumn nostalgia in the late afternoon sunlight was only added to by watching a fat, round sun gently ease itself behind the mountains as the courtesy bus took me from Nara station to the hotel.

I checked in, and crashed on the bed drinking green tea before heading down to the bar where they have huge windows fronting onto a traditional Japanese garden with a waterfall pouring into its midst.
After finishing my self-congratulatory beer and gloating over the hordes of suited Japanese businessmen finishing up the day's deals, I headed down to check out the onsen, where I have just spent a pleasant hour lolling from hot bath to sauna to cold bath to hot bath whilst amusedly watching the little old ladies vigorously striding around and around the cool walking bath.

There's nothing like the ritual of an onsen or a swim in the sea or a river to formalise a change of circumstances. Am going to miss the silky feel of my skin after an onsen very much.

Tremendously Tumultuous Tripping in Tokyo

Imagine a place the geographical size of downtown Sydney or Melbourne. Now multiply the number of skyscrapers within that space by about 10 or 20, and the number of flashing neon lights by about 100.

Okay, before you get seriously unimpressed - that's not Tokyo - that could be Shibuya, or Shinjuku, or Akihabara or Harajuku or one of the 23 special "wards" that make up the city of Tokyo. The place is absolutely ENORMOUS.

Now imagine trying to explore a place like that in a little over 24 hours.
Wanna go tripping?

I caught the Shinkansen up early on a Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago and found myself deposited in the middle of Tokyo a little over two hours after riding my bike out the door. Wow! What a difference. Going up, the view was pretty typical of urban Japan, until we got to Atami: beautiful soaring mountains next to the sea with quaint little towns nestled in the gullies. After that we went through a series of long tunnels and were presently in Yokohama, a city in its own right on Tokyo's doorstop.

After taking obligatory shots of bullet trains in the smoking gun of Japan it was time for Tokyo Orientation 101. I failed miserably and got caught in my usual trick of wandering around and around in circles, not quite sure where I was or where I wanted to be or how the hell to navigate the vomited coloured spaghetti otherwise known as Tokyo's train system. They have about 100 different companies running about 50 different lines and none of them sync together especially well. And you all thought the privatisation of the Melbourne public transport system was a mess.

I met up with my travel buddy Charlotte outside Shinjuku and we wandered and wandered some more, just taking in the size and craziness of it all. I was becoming more flighty by the minute as the pace and stimuli bombardment honed in on my central nervous system. Soon Kevin was jumping up and down as if he'd just swallowed a kilo of jellybeans washed down with a couple of litres of red cordial.

We found ourselves in the midst of the red light district, where the walls were plastered with photos of young boys and the streets were filled with their friends and their bosses, otherwise known as the Yakuza. There was no mistaking these guys and definately no messing with them either. I kept my camera securely in my pack. One big guy in an outlandish suit and matching glasses was blocking the way of all traffic in one of the back streets, and it was strange to see people clearly uninvolved with him giving him a supremely wide berth. Tokyo is a city where everyone pushes everyone else out of the way all the time and I started walking around in a defensive upper body karate pose for protection, but no one laid a finger on this guy. The aura around him alone was terrifying. On a lighter note, see if you can identify the guy who doesn't fit in on the Hot Men's Box wall?


We went and booked into our hotel and then headed off to Akihabara, the electronics centre of Tokyo and home of the new "maid cafe" phenomenon. A classmate had come back from Tokyo the weekend before, espousing how this cute little Japanese girl had spoon fed him, written "Master" on his food in ketchup, and talked to him in a bunch of very high level polite Japanese of which he didn't understand the subtleties. Charlotte was keen to check out this phenomenon, or even better, an even newer "butler cafe". I just wanted to scratch away as much of the surface as possible of this mad city, and stay well away from Roppongi, Gaijin Central. We came out of the back exit of the station, and managed to miss completely most of central Akihabara. However, we did come across what appeared to be well dressed buskers, mostly young Japanese women, singing cheesy pop songs and surrounded by hoards of geeky looking older men with crazy truck off lenses on crazy truck off state of the art digital cameras, all incidentally singing and dancing along in a humorously geeky fashion.

Off to one side were a bunch of kids practising dance moves which my travel buddy, an anime fan, identified as the dance to some animé series or other. One of the kids had "otaku" written on his baseball cap which was a refreshing reclamation of a term that has always been used derogatively in the past.


Not sure if the singers were famous and the guys with cameras, professional photographers, Charlotte, whose Japanese is infinitely better than mine, asked the kids what was going on. It turned out that they were wannabe animation session singers hoping to be picked up by a recording studio or production company. The geeks with cameras were just that, . . . tech geeks who hung around Akihabara and had become groupies of the various wannabes, testing out their expensive equipment on these hopeful pretty young things.
Only in Japan!

Charlotte had to go off to meet her brother at the airport who was flying in from the States. Feeling trapped between wanting to gorge on as much of this menagerie as possible and badly needing a chill out space, I wandered around in circles some more, found the rest of Akihabara, including an Atom (astroboy) shirt I had been looking for for several months, and then stumbled over to Shibuya, supposedly one of the cooler hangouts spots and away from the tech geeks.

I managed to come out of the wrong subway exit yet again, and missed the heart of Shibuya, which was probably a good thing at the time> What I did find though was a labyrinth of back streets with small quiet bars and restaurants dotted around, that looked like they were setting up for the evening. Attracted by the interior décor of one, I checked out the (English) menu, found the prices affordable and wandered in, to be deposited on a cute little table next to a window overlooking the train platform. Perfect. Indulged in a Thai curry and a glass of acceptable house wine and watched the world go by from a position of safety and comfort.


Later on in the evening I met up with Charlotte again and we plotted ways in which to paint the town red. We headed back over to Shinjuku, which I had heard had some really cool clubs, but after wandering around for a while looking for signs of something cool and asking various bouncers who only laughed at us, we ran for the last train and squished over to Shibuya. The cool factor was much higher and we asked a guy giving out "free hugs" if he could tell us a place to find a boogie. He directed us over to the police box. I was flummoxed and somewhat insulted. Coming from a wannabe police state I've yet to meet a cop who might actually not want to harass me, beat me up or just spoil anything approaching fun. Cops are the guys who viciously laugh at you for having anything approaching ideals. The most conservative, prejudiced, dishonest, people on the planet. But these cops actually told us where to go, pulled out a map and gave us directions to a huge rave.

We stopped off at a couple of clubs along the way: one was filled with way too many gaigin and bad hip hop and the other was a gorgeous little roof garden bar playing some chilled tunes. But it was an establishment for drinking and Charlotte doesn't, so we kept going. Turning up a couple of back streets we found a huge line to get into a three story club that had an all night party going on. Alright, now we're talking.

Determined to have a good time we stuck it out for several hours, but the music was either saccharine house, bad mainstream hip hop or hardcore acid trance, and the bouncers were big imported A**H***S with too much testosterone who had a nasty habit of too much physical contact and kind of freaked me out. One guy kept pushing me in the direction he wanted to steer the crowd and when I told him not too, he looked like he wanted to hit me or throw me out. We hung out on the middle floor for a while; they had platforms you could dance on and the local kids kept urging Charlotte to take her crazy dancing up on one, but when she did the bouncers came and dragged her off, as they did to any of the guys. It seemed they only wanted petite beautiful chicks with hardly any clothing up there.

Around 3:30am we both admitted that we'd had enough and were tired after a long day. Charlotte hadn't really eaten and we ended up inside Makudonaraudos with half of Shibuya who were using it as a cheap hotel. We found out why when the taxi fare turned out to be $70. Ouch!

The next morning we got up not so bright and early and headed back over to Akihabara cause I wanted to get some RAM to replace one of the karked chips in my laptop. We ended up at one of the big discount shops but the guy kept telling me I had to put Mac RAM inside my Mac, which I'm sure isn't true, but I really didn't want to make a mistake when it would be unreturnable. The Mac section quoted me $180 for a GB and still weren't sure what they were talking about and I figured I'd rather spend a lot of money somewhere I could understand the sales assistant. We still didn't find the maid cafes, but did see lots of "maids" handing out flyers for various budget electronics stores.

We ended up having breakfast in a Linux Cafe which was nice.


In Harajuku I found myself most out of place and most at home. The long straight tree lined street dipped sharply downhill and then careered as sharply uphill again and would have had a village atmosphere if it wasn't so BIG. Huge buildings lining the street, becoming progressively more chic and expensive the further away from the station you got. With some seriously nice design work. To enlarge the images, click on the thumbnail above the central bigger image.




We walked all the way down and up one side and then down and up the other side until we ended up between the station and Yoyogi Park where all the Cosplay kids come out to play on Sundays. Or more accurately, come out to be photographed by the tourists. It was probably the only human zoo in the world where you don't have to pay money for photos.



We hung around for a while, just watching, and then grabbed some lunch at cool little cafe that didn't have a huge queue out the front, possibly because the cuisine was more to a western than a Japanese taste, in fact I could have been eating in Sydney or Melbourne. Tired and exhausted we went back to central Tokyo Station and bought some necessary omiage before falling into the next shinkansen home.

To see a larger version of the cosplay slide show click here. To check out all my photos click here.

Okazaki

Japanese suburbs. There are mountains in the distance I can't seem to quite reach on my bike and a nice enough river with a semi decent bike path. The only pool I've found, that you don't need a lifetime membership for, never seems to be open. I keep longingly riding down to this delightful open air pool (a rarity in Japan) in the middle of a pretty park. Unfortunately the pool has a big high fence around it and I wish I was still in uni and had some friends with whom I could climb the fence with in the middle of the night.

Other than that the place is intrinsically bland. A good place to hunker down and study.

My apartment is about a third the size of my place in Marugame, but is functional and does have the luxury air conditioning, which has actually been really nice during the record breaking heatwave that has engulfed most of Japan this summer. This week the temperature has finally dropped below thirty for the first time in a couple of months, which means I have been able to enjoy the other bonus of my apartment: a nice deep bath with room to stretch out your legs. My last bath was cube shaped and I could just about squat inside it! This evening I went for a decently long ride, which quickly turned into a ride through the rain, and when I got back I filled the bath, turned on the rice cooker and soaked whilst waiting for my dinner. I think I could get used to the Japanese habit of night time baths. Unfortunately I'm leaving soon. However I'm past regrets and really looking forward to going home.

Study has been equally rewarding and frustrating. As a result of living in the country without a formal study regime, I have learnt to survive well using a mixture of verbs and nouns. Thus my language comprehension is much better than my production. In fact my grammar is incredibly confused and confusing.

The school I am studying at works on two-week modules that run from friday to thurday (even though weekends are still holidays). Before you start, and at the end of each module, you are given a placement test. If, at the end of a module, you don't get 70% in the test, you can't move on the the next module.

When I first came I got placed into a class, looked through the book and realised I kind of knew everything we were going to be studying for the next two weeks. I spent my first couple of days staring out the window and begging to be moved up to the next class. I had to study really hard for another test to go up, in which I messed up all the simple stuff: bad verb conjugation and illiterate use of particles (the Japanese equivalent of prepositions). But I was convinced I could do it and cause I was probably something of a brat, they let me move up. What I didn't know was how strict the teachers are. Thus I spent the next two weeks after school had finished studying a minimum of an extra six hours a day, trying to catch up with everyone else. Naturally when the end of module test happened, I bombed.

I went home and had a good hard look at my ego and my expectations. Me have unrealistic expectations of myself? Never. Me make life too hard for myself so that when I f*&k up I have a good reason to hate myself? Course not.

I had two choices: repeat the module I had just done or swallow a chokingly large piece of humble pie. I grudgingly admitted to myself and my teachers that I had messed up the test, not because I didn't get the stuff we had just covered, but because even though I knew about the principles of verb conjugation, it wasn't something I was comfortable with, and could in all honesty do with some more practice. And about particles I'm still confused, but maybe getting there slowly.....

So I went back to where they wanted to put me in the first place and have just aced my test. I'm feeling much more confident about my communication abilities even though I'm not yet on the verge on intermediate, which is where my ego wanted to be, but its given me some time to focus on other important things, like looking after myself, getting photos photoshopped, slideshows created and blogs up to date.

I have a week more of school, and in the meantime am starting to muse about what to send home, what to bribe the airline officials to let me bring and what sort of presents to get people.

Space is a premium so get your orders in fast.

Sayonara #6

Tuesday was hot, really hot. It was like the Japanese summer had hit with a true vengeance. None of these sissy 34-35 degree days any more. Time to crash through the 40 degree barrier.

Yuka and I had been talking about going to Kurashiki since we had been to Hiroshima, over a year before. The town where she grew up, it lies just over the bridge next to Okayama. Many years ago it was the central rice store for Japan, and the traditional architecture has been preserved and attracts phenomenal amounts of tourist, especially during Obon!





The historical quarter is centred around Kurashiki Gawa (river) which was used for transportation of the rice. Now the area is littered with restaurants and arts and crafts shop. We found a shop devoted entirely to pickles, which have become one of my favourite Japanese foods, and another with a zillion different types of beans.


I bought some souvenirs for my family and soon to be new boss, but not giving any hints away here. Yuka wanted to buy some murasuzume for her mum, and managed to find a shop where they teach you how to make it. Murasuzume is one of Kurashiki's speciality sweets, sweet bean paste folded inside a pancake style mixture.

The final product looks like a less plastic version of this:


All this food was making us hungry and we were already exhausted from the heat so we found the busiest place in Kurashiki to have lunch. They made a version of udon, local to the region, that is thicker than the Sanuki variety, and although I was really dubious about eating udon outside Kagawa, it was actually really good.

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I rocked up to my last ever karate training early for once and on the verge of tears. However I wasn't given much time to be sentimental as we skipped normal warmups and went straight into hard core combination practice up and down the dojo, the sweat streaming off everyone before we had even started. The dojo was helping by doing a good impression of a wet steam room.

Then I realised the reason for my new gloves. As a goodbye ritual I had to fight everyone in the dojo, from the youngest little kid to Kunikata Sensei himself. Thank the Dojo Kami it was Obon and people were remarkably scarce. It started off really fun, messing around with the little kids. But the heat was killer and before I had finished off three of them the heat had me, my dogi was drenched and my face was so red it was almost green.

About half way through the ordeal it did go green for a while, see if you can spot the photo, and I had to go outside and get some fresh air to avoid throwing up. Then Irikura Sensei aimed a well executed kick at my head, I didn't get my defences up in time, somehow he didn't pull it back and I went crashing to the floor with a ring of birds circling my brain that had ended up on the other side of the room.

I ended up fighting 15 people on one of the hottest nights of the year. I kept joking that was the same test I would have to do to get my ni kyu, my brown belt which is the last before a black belt, known in Japan as shodan. However, whilst everyone laughed and appreciated my humour and my effort, no new obi was forthcoming. Instead they tried to make me promise to come back and get it.




Kunikata was taking photos all night and at the end of the evening burnt them all onto a CD for me. It was really really hard to leave and for the first time I cried. I was catching the shinkansen up to Okazaki the next day and my last night was unbelievably cool and sad at the same time.

Thank you so much everyone.

Sayonara #5

Monday was Saying Goodbye to Country day. In a whirlwind week of lunches, coffees and packing, this was my down time when I truly realised I was leaving. I'd purposefully left the whole day free and mid morning headed off down route 32 towards Tokushima and my favourite hang, Iya Valley. Yoshino River runs through Tokumaisha and is famed throughout Japan for its lusciously clear turquoise waters. I stopped off for some traditioanl Iya Valley soba noodles and then hung a left over the blue bridge and down the old route 32 towards my favourite swim spot. This is where I used to come to cleanse myself of "city" grime and stress before heading up to Chiiori when I was volunteering up there most weekends.

It was a beautiful hot summer day. Perfect for going up into the coolness of the mountains and frolicking in a fresh water river. As if the yama-kami knew I was coming they had filtered the river especially for me and it was clearer that I'd ever seen it. In the midst of a severe drought in Shikoku it was also a lot lower than usual. The temperature was perfect and I spent almost a couple of hours swimming, sitting on rocks in the midddle of the river, drying off, jumping in again and playing in the rapids further up. Eventually a sand fly came and reminded me I had other places to say goodbye to and no matter how far underwater I swam it persistently bugged me to get a move on. I dried off in the sun on a rock, said thank you to the river kami, and feeling at peace with the world headed on down the road.

The rest of the day turned into a road trip of my favourite places and routes. The old route 32 winds along one of the subsidiaries of Yoshino Gawa, barely more than one lane for much of the time with hair-raising blind hairpin bends and steep drop offs down the cliffs. Even though it takes all concentration to stay on the road and you don't really get much time to check out and appreciate the view, its one of my favourite roads to drive on ever.


I headed out to Higiashi Iya, past the road that leads up to Chiiori, and up towards Tsurugi San, the second highest mountain in Shikoku, which I am ashamed to say, I have never climbed.

From Tsurugi I headed back home, down through a different section of Tokushima with its own unique charms and vistas. When I finally got home I was in a state of melancholic contentment. when i first came to Shikoku i said I wanted to try and get to know one region of Japan well, rather than see as much of possible of the country, and these mountains have been one of the prime instigators of my love for this island. Thank you.

Sayonara #4

Sunday was busy, crazy and beautiful. I woke up reasonably early for once and went to say goodbye to Akate Sensei and Akate Sensei, my shodo senseis who have tried hard to transform my dodgy unbalanced squiggles into something approaching a decent attempt at representing the Japanese character set. Sometimes my blodgy lines even made pretences at art. I rushed back to have lunch with my landlords, and I might add, the best landlords I have EVER had the pleasure of doing business with. It’s a pretty rare and top be treasured circumstance when you become friends with the people you pay money too. We went over to the local wood fired pizza place where they have made a pretty good attempt at reconciling the western and Japanese palates for western food. I think the giant burger monopolies are one of the only other establishments to have imported a cuisine and not completely bastardised it. Not that Asian food in the west is any less guilty of masquerade! However we all emerged from the restaurant fully deffuts and barely able to walk as we entered the sun fired oven that is Japan in August. Which was lucky because then I had to go over to Yukas and get my hair cut for the last time.

In the evening I went out with the senseis from karate; it was possibly the most fun night out I've had in Japan. We met up around eightish, and spent the next hour driving around Marugame looking for an izakaya that wasn't full, because it was Obon and everyone who had come home for the weekend had chosen this particular evening to go out drinking with their mates. Obon is a shinto festival where it is practically obligatory to go back to your "born house" where you meet up with you family and pray at the shrines of your ancestors. This its also a really good opportunity to catch up with all the school friends you haven't seen since you all moved off to different big smokes.


Eventually we found somewhere and spent the next few hours doing some serious eating and drinking. It never fails me how expansive Japansese people become in an izakaya and an normal going out for dinner always turns into a mini banquet. An izakaya is like a cross between and pub and a restaurant. At the former you go to eat, and maybe have a glass of wine or beer on the side and at a latter you go to drink and perhaps eat anything from a shared bowl of chips to a full gourmet meal on the side. but its still a pub, a place for drinking. At an izakaya both seem to have equal priority, and anyone and everyone orders what they feel like, when they feel like it. In some places like this one, you have your own little room with shodo paper doors and a bell on the table to summon an attentive waiter.

At others, tables are crammed on top of each other and service is achieved with a very loud "sumimasen" yelled at the number of employees running around frantically. Ironically, the "sumimasen", which literally means excuse me, becomes more and more belligerent sounding at the night wears on. Even more amazing is how the seemingly endless array of dishes that pours through the door generally gets finished.

As a goodbye present, the guys had got me a pair of cool leather gloves for fighting. And I foolishly wanted to try them out at my last training session. Stay tuned.

I already miss these people sooooo much. Thanks for everything guys.

clockwise from back left: Irikura, me, Kunikata, Hiro, Yumi, Kunishige.

Sayonara #3

KONPIRA SAN

Sat morning I went over to Sugimoto San's house to give him his last private Japanese lesson. I have been teaching him for well over a year and in that time, due to his hard work and diligence, it has been a pleasure to watch his English, especially his conversational ability, bloom. At the beginning I was trying to teach him using my very broken Japanese and conversations required heavy simultaneous use of both our electronic dictionaries. In recent months he has been conducting business via fax with a contact in China using their only common language, English.

After class they took me over to Konpira San so I could ask the Gods for their blessing in person. Sugimoto San is a marine engineer, so it was a fitting location as we share a love of boats and the sea. Unfortunately, it was the first real scorcher of the summer and we managed to arrive in the hottest part of the day. His wife, well into her first pregnancy, went off for a relaxed coffee whilst we battled the 785 very steep steps to the top. I paid my respects to the Kami Sama and we headed back down for some of the best udon I have ever had in a beautiful old wooden building. After checking out their favourite "private" beach in Nio, which happened to be packed, we headed back, thoroughly exhausted, for shaved ice, an unsung Japanese speciality.

Sayonara #2

I spent Thursday and Friday morning packing up stuff maniacally (now there's a word I haven't used in quite a while) and followed Geoff's advice (my soon to be skipper) "if in doubt, chuck it out" but it was still so hard. I had been living in this apartment for two years, almost to the day, the longest time I have spent in one abode for a very long time. Naturally there was a huge accumulation of stuff.

Kumiko San, Yukari San, Reiko San and Chiu San all came over shortly before lunchtime to help out. And they were all fortunate enough [sic] to see me at my most relaxed. The biggest dramas of the day were trying to sell my stuff, especially my fridge, to second hand stores, and figure out how to ship my bike. It turns out, that since buying my fridge second hand, new laws have been enacted in Japan which means that second hand stores can only legally buy stuff with a specific serial number, which my fridge didn't have. At one stage it looked like I was going to have to PAY the equivalent of $70 for the privilege of recycling it. At that point enough was enough and I decided it was lunchtime. Stress levels were rising at the same rate my blood sugar level was dropping and I needed to get out of the house.

After lunch we investigated shipping my bike up to Okazaki. I went over to the bike shop where I had bought my bike, and where the day before they had promised to set aside a bike box for me. But the shop was firmly closed. Aargh. Luckily I went back later and they had me a box, and good news, it was somewhat wider than your normal bike box. A sure way to reduce me to tears is to give me a box and bike to put in it. Its an engineering impossibility! Then I had to move it. In Japan they have this really neat courier service called hakyubin, where companies will transport stuff around the country for comparatively minimal rates. But again, large boxes seemed to be exempt from this and the first few quotes I got were around the $80 mark. If I was going to ship it down to the airport and bring it home, I thought it would probably cost a similar amount and the bike wasn't really worth that much. Finally we found out (or my excellent friends did) that if I took my bike to the main depot in the area they would ship it for about $30. Even better the box was so big I managed to stuff a bunch of other stuff into it as well!

They all divvied up my stuff and we ran a mock auction for some of the nicer furniture I had picked up and my plants. Reiko fell in love with my favourite cactus and decided to call it "green." My cool little succulent that has an amazing purple stem like flower with other little flowers that branched of it we called Yukari, which means "purple" in Japanese. They were all on strict instructions to love my plants with extreme care and attention!

Meanwhile Chiyu talked to the guy who runs the community centre and they were quite happy to take my fridge off my hands. They even arranged to come and pick it up the next day. Yattah!
Then followed final goodbyes with these beautiful students who had become good friends and I managed not to cry.

Sayonara #1

Somewhat late in its update, I feel compelled to document my last week or so in Kagawa, and the beauty and angst over so many goodbyes.

I finished classes late in July amidst dinners and lunches and last classes with all my students, may of whom have become amazing friends in the past year or two. There is a shrine in Kotohira, 20 minutes from where I live, called Konpira San. It is famed for being a potent of good luck for seafaring journeys and sailors and fisherman from all over Japan come to ask for blessing before embarking upon the ocean. Not one, but two of my classes went to the effort of buying me good luck charms for my upcoming transoceanic journey. As one class happily informed me, there is a custom that once one has returned safely from the sea, it is proper to return to the shrine to pay respects and thanks to the Gods. Thus ensuring my obligation to return to Kagawa at some stage!

After finishing classes I was contractually obliged to report to work for the next two weeks until I could take up the rest of my holiday time and leave on the 8th August. At the same time, we had a wave of exchange students coming and going and everyone in the office, except for me was frantically busy and continually exhausted. Unable to help I sat going slightly nuts, studying Japanese and surfing the internet. On my last day, because of the officiousness of Japanese bureaucracy, I had to go in for two hours, but ironically no one was around!

However I had a lunch and art gallery date with my excellent friend Yukari, and we trotted off together to see the amazing new exhibit at Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art where they had an exhibition showing by Ernesto Neto, Brazilian installation artist extraordinaire.

He makes room like spaces using a variety of fabrics, mainly cotton and nylon using mainly white with splashes of colour. Unlike so much art where one is expected to appreciate from afar his works are sensual pieces that invite the viewer to play and become supremely involved. For someone just released from the bondage of office incarceration it was a playground for big kids. Huge beanbags filled with plastic balls like one finds in ikea playrooms for kids, beanbag dresses you can try on, tunnels filled with strange nylon tubes stretching from floor to a low ceiling you had to stoop under. Rarely one was also allowed to take photographs, and after playing for a while Yukari ran downstairs to grab her cellphone, whereupon we played some more taking stupendously silly photography. Here are some of the prints she later gave me:





This was definitely the coolest exhibition I have EVER seen.

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/neto.html
http://www.bombsite.com/neto/neto.html
http://web.infoweb.ne.jp/MIMOCA/index_e.html

Decompression sickness

I think Huxley would understand, except he had substances to mess with his brain. I feel like I’m the white rabbit being dragged backwards through the hole and everything is happening in reverse. I’ve never been attached to a place like this before and had to leave. And I’ve been thinking way too much, and drinking some too much, which is all compounding the problem.

Perry may have forced his way in, in 1853 but to a large extent the Japanese still follow a course of self enforced seclusion. Its not that they don’t like the rest of the world, they’re just scared of it. Imagine never breaking free of an over protective mother and then growing up to realise that the whole society around you is that mother. Except its all you ever know, so there’s nothing weird about it.

After my own self enforced seclusion from the world; time to heal and become me again without outside interference, I found myself plunged into limbo about three weeks ago when all my classes abruptly stopped for the summer vacation, but I still had thirteen days to serve and was thus incarcerated in the office with absolutely nothing to do. Bad news from home served to further dampen my spirits and heighten my frustration, but after the first couple of days of throwing TVs and chairs out of the window I decided that it would be much more profitable to put the time and the internet, printer and photocopy access to good use.

First priority was, of course, Japanese study, but I started reading to break up the tedium of grammar exercises. I’ve been listening to some of the lectures from the new iTunes U section, and focussing on political science, with respect to globalisation and especially america-middle east foreign policy. This has led to downloading papers from weighty think tanks and trying to get my head around the basics of what some of the smarter people in the world are discussing in regard to fixing up the world's current mess. And I’ve been thinking too much. After being wrapped up in this cosy bubble for so long, with warm hearted Japanese to hang with and warm fuzzy forests to play and hang in, I’ve just jumped into an icy cold shower of global reality.

I think what is most taxing at the moment is that I've lost all grasp on perspective. As I come out of the Japanese bubble, I know the world isn't nearly as scary as my current peers would have themselves believe, but I seem to have acquired this superman syndrome whereby I'm undefeatable. My old fear of pain has shrunk considerably since being beaten up regularly for fun and the only thing left to be really scared of is my brain. The irony being that this self same bravado may be self fulfilling as it leads me into a tricky corner!

At the same time I’m saying goodbye to a whole host of beautiful people whilst approaching one of the biggest cross roads of my life. I can do anything I want from here on in and that’s simultaneously liberating and frightening. Sailing, university, film school, hiding under a doona indefinitely are some of the possibilities that have been flickering across my consciousness more often than most and I've become the proverbial kid in the candy store. This emotional tsunami is creating havoc with my zen.

Thus confusion is the word of the week, with greater confusion being the most likely modus operandi for the next few weeks as i submerge myself into full time Japanese study from Thursday onwards.

Please write and lend me some perspective. Will return it soon I promise.

Naoshima II

The last weekend in July, just before leaving Kagawa I went back to Naoshima, once more with Yukari San, with Chiyu San and Kumiko San too. We all met at Nio Marina where Chiyu San's husband and some of his fishing friends took us over to the island by high speed fishing boat. It was to take about 2 hours to get there and Chiyu had made some onegiri (Japanese rice balls) for lunch which we ate under the Seto Ohashi (bridge). The guys threw some lines out and after catching a case of seasickness Yukari joined in too. After we started the engines up again Kumiko caught Yukari's seasickness and spent the rest of the trip trying to put a brave face on it but was clearly relieved as we approached the island.

Kumiko and Yukari

Kumiko

First off we went to Chichu Art Museum. It was Chiyu San and Kumiko San's first visit to Naoshima, and this is definately the must see. The "Monet Garden" that they were fixing up when Yukari, Hisako San and I went there, was now in its full summer glory and it truly was a living piece of art that conveyed the sense of Monet's paintings surprisingly well.

I wanted to leave the Monet for last, because it had impressed me so much. After seeing it, the others wanted to line up again to see the James Turrel piece, a very cool work that relies and the shock of having your preception fooled. This time I hadn't enjoyed it nearly so much as six months earlier so I sat quite happily on the white marble cubed tiles in the middle of the underground Monet room lit by natural light and feasted on the colours which just got more amazing and intricate the longer I looked at the main piece.

Of course, being an art gallery, photos aren't allowed, but Yukari hapenned to have her keitei on her and took an illegal photo of one of the coolest sections of Tadao Ando's amazing concrete space that the shop doesn't have a postcard of. Some nice person has also uploaded the postcards that you can buy in the shop so click here for pictures of the art work.

We headed off to Benesse House, the gallery another creation of Tadao Ando, so it was fitting that I was with the Ando twins: Chiyu and Kumiko. Ironically, Hisako San, who came with Yukari and I last year, is also an Ando, one of the more common names in Japan after Tanaka! I don't think I actually know any Suzuki's. Benesse House has some nice pieces, but if you find yourself on Naoshima one day, and limited for time, go the Standard Project, which I saw last time and Chichu Museam. I think we were also all getting quite tired and hungry so we headed off to find a cute little cafe and say goodbye to Kumiko who was catching the last ferry back so as to be able to go to work the next day. Whilst eating dinner an amazing storm crossed the island and it suddenly belted down with torrential rain. This was the last of the rainy season before the killer heat set in for the next six weeks or so: Japan is just starting to cool off as I write this, early Sept. Whilst waiting for the bus, truly ear splitting cracks of thunder sundered the sky directly over our heads and while I laughed maniacally and danced in the rain and the green hues, one of my friends cowered in the doorway screaming everytime the storm whipped the sound waves.


After waving Kumiko, we went off to our Minshuku to find the power down, which was somewhat exciting. A little one room hut with tatami flooring and attached bathroom, the view made up for the slight shabbiness and the rock hard Japanese pillow filled with little round beads. As we draink beer, ploughed through mounds of nuts and chocolate and told stories a terrible screeching, not unlike a possum, announced itself outside, whereby I got myself a first time real look at the fabled Tanuki. About the same size as a fox, an odd little creature with mythically large balls that the Japanese translate into English as racoon dog. One of Studio Ghibli's early films is called Pom Poko and is an interesting ecological critique of the economic boom and subsequent development in Japan. But I divert.

We awaok far to early the next morning so that Yukari and I could get to work by the afternoon. Whilst waiting for the ferry we took photos of the famous red pumpkin, icon of Naoshima and I introduced my new friend Schnapps, star of my next blog, to the camera.

Yukari and Chiyu

shiken

On Thursday I had a karate shiken (test) to upgrade to my next obi. I have been preparing for this for over a month. Every night at karate Sensei has put me up against different black belts, refining my kicks, punches, blocks and movement. In Moumonjiku Karate , the yellow belt is roku kyu (6th grade) and I had to fight 5 people to get it. For my midori obi I have to fight 10 people, which is upping the stakes just a wee tad.

The test is divided into two parts: in the first you have to perform various moves to demonstrate technique. I thought this would be easy but I was soon out of breath. Damn this office job. I'm seriously out of condition at the moment, somewhat overweight and as the photos show, badly in need of a haircut. As the week wore on I became more and more worried about the fighting bit. a) it hurts a lot getting hit and kicked by guys bigger, heavier, faster and stronger than you, most of whom have been doing this for over ten years (b) the stamina required is intense.

The way it works is you have to fight for a very long minute and then get a very short minute to overcome nausea, recover your breath, grab a sip of water and find some remnant of willpower to keep going.

After my first shiken, for my blue obi, when I only had to fight a measley three people, I finished the test going through a rainbow of adrenalin fuelled emotions that found me laughing, crying and high as a kite all at the same time. In a way though, that was the worst one. I hadn't yet learnt to block and every kick left a large blue mark. Those who know me well know how easily I bruise.

So here I've tried to document the process in true photo journalistic style, not holding back the pain, anger or humour, of which surprisingly there was plenty. Everyone was superbly encouraging, a non-stop multi player running commentary accompanied my battles with cheers of encouragement, appreciation of nice moves, and the all pervading frantic yells to "KEEP MOVING!" Guys - can't you see I'm exhausted? However its a credit to my japanese I understood most of it and a credit to my senseis that only three kicks really really hurt - and boy did the ones that got though hurt! I'm not going to be able to walk properly for the next week at least!

The first four photos are technique.

How cool does this look?

Watch out Bruce Lee!

This is the Karate Kid double kick.

Alright - time for the real thing. Pads on.

Faster with that fan Shuu.

Wake up Hiro!

Why am I doing this?

Yeah - gotcha!

And again!

Can I go home yet?

Take that!

And that!



Hey . . . that hurt!

Now you're really making me angry.

Thank heavens its over.

This is the most excellent Kunikata Sensei. He had to fight 60 people to get his Third Dan. His brilliant sense of humour probably helped. The kid in the background is his son, Hiroshi.

Thanks Hiro.

Domo arrigato gozaimashita

The gang.

Hey, I remember you when you were in your mum's belly.

How am I supposed to be feeling right now?