Tomioka Fall Festival

note: this post is at least one month late

Tomioka had a festival. It was a big one, and the best time I have had in Tomioka in a long time. Festivals in Japan are a big deal. This one in particular was big deal because it only happens every other year. Everyone in the city participates. From kids to old people everyone dresses up and plays some part in the festivities. For weeks I have been hearing people practicing the Japanese flute and drums getting ready. After a month of being painfully out of tune, they were approaching pleasant sounds.
This is how the festival goes. Each tiny neighborhood in the city has a "team". They all wear matching outfits and form a festival band. Each neighborhood team has either a float or a moving Shinto shrine that they tend to during the festival. The floats are two story, big, moving carts. They have lanterns strung around them and tapestries on the main part. Children usually sit up front and beat the drums while some play the flute. All the floats play the same festival song. Everyone is dressed up in traditional costumes, though, every neighborhood has a different attire, and many have these alien looking headbands on. The top story of the float either has some people on the top swinging lanterns or a mannequin of a character or famous historical figure. The whole float is pulled by a team with two ropes. Some flute players or dancers jaunt around outside. So the whole thing goes slowly up and down the festival streets with its songs chortling and the kids and babies all excited and the adults happy from the copious amounts of free sake.
The moving Shinto shrines are a more serious matter. It looks like a tiny little house, but made of gold and wood, and purple rope. On the top of it is usually a gold bird- perhaps a phoenix, maybe or eagle.... I can't tell. The shrine is on a platform of three large beams. The shrine is ridiculously heavy.... about a billion pounds would be the exact measurement. A group of about thirty men hoist the shrine onto their shoulders and take it through the streets. They bounce as they go and chant a word as they do it. The shrine shakes and all the gold glitters. Its ridiculously hard work and there is a group of another 30 men to take the place of those carrying it when they get tired. The incredible burden is eased with lots of camaraderie and lots of openly distributed alcohol.
On saturday, when I first got to the festival, what I found were groups of kids lifting mini moving shinto shrines and doing the obligatory bobbing that goes along with it. Floats were being dragged around too. I saw many of my students all dressed up, playing their various festival parts. I walked around for a bit and then headed for the International Association tent on the grounds of the elementary school. As soon as I got there the Thai ladies gave me five plates of food, a beer, and a cup of chai tea. They had made everything themselves and it was very delicious. I hung around there with Trey and the other internationals. The Indonesian guys from the mount Fuji trip were there. I felt like shit for not ever inviting them to hang out after that. We walked around some more to look at the floats. Mr. Imai gave us some special festival shirts and bands to wear. We were very skeptical about this since it probably meant we were going to have to do something, though no one would tell us what. I saw a huge line of old ladies in kimonos dancing down the street chanting their festival chant. They were led by this incredible old guy who danced like a little sprite, shouted directions to the grandmas, and had a huge unfaltering smile on his face. He was gayer than the day is long and I am sure this was his one day to shine. Trey said his idol must have been Richard Simmons, but this Japanese guy was so much more.
I watched my adult student dance a lion dance. Apparently its very traditional and he takes it very seriously. There was someone dressed as monkey-god's messenger and three men dressed in lion's masks. The masks were decorated with feathers and didn't look much like how we picture lions. The lions and monkeys danced along to music, and the lions beat little drums strapped to their chests. It was an excellent performance. Ironically, it was followed by a troupe of kids and teenagers dressed in black sweatsuits dancing to "gangsta" American rap songs and attempting to "stomp". As if that weren't bizarre enough they were followed by a group of teenage girls in short short skirts dancing crazily to more inappropriate American music. Also in the space of these hours I met a crazy Bengladesh-ian (Bengal?) guy who was super friendly in an odd and annoying way. He kept insisting that we "go get some drinks" "go get some drinks" "go get some drinks". I kept shrugging it off or making excuses for a long time, but he wouldn't let it, or me alone, even though I had other foreigner friends to hang out with. At last he cornered me into it and because I am too nice I went along with it. "Drinks" turned out to be green slurpie-like things at the nearby department store. He talked to me about things, which I pretended to care about. He expressed his need to find a wife and get married. I told him that was nice and the stupid token expressions that you say in such stupid situations. He said his friend had an American wife and how shoe was sooo nice and now he wanted to find and American girlfriend, but he's not handsome so he can't. I told him that American girls are awful, selfish, horrid little brats.... not really, but I told him to keep looking. He asked me if I wanted more drinks and his method of asking was more like "Lets have more drinks! Come on. more drinks, don't you want some more, let's have more drinks, why don't you want more drinks" in less than 10 seconds. As if I wanted to to drink 10 glasses of frozen green slurpie slush. One never quite does it for me. I said hell no and made us leave. I bolted back to my more sane foreigner buddies and found refuge.
Then inexplicably, all the foreigners were herded into a 10 minute dance lesson. We were going to be dancing up and down the streets in a huge line of all the other dancing groups. Of course the dance made no sense and no one could understand it only ten minutes. It was pretty much hopeless from the start. We gave it a try though. When the time came, all of us dressed in our shirts and belts and super-tight headbands. We all stood in three lines behind another group of old ladies in kimonos who graciously tried to demonstrate the dance for us. We tried our best, but still didn't know what we were doing. No one was in sync. We were clinking our little sticks together hopelessly. The float teams on the sideline were trying to encourage us. Eventually we started to catch on after the 5th lap around the festival. I was so tired by the end.
After the dancing, the International Association disbanded. Mr. Imai took us to his van and gave us different shirt/jackets to wear. This could only mean more festivities awaited us. He took us to his neighborhood team station. Everyone was eating and drinking beer and sake. We were shown around and offered some beer. Mr. Imai mingled with his important Tomioka city such and such friends. Trey and I tried to mingle with the regular folks, but with less success. Suddenly everyone perked up and we knew it was time. Mikoshi time! Moving Shinto shrine time! The ridiculously heavy spirit house was about to be heaved, bobbed, and shimmied through Tomioka. The men all lined up along the three wood beams that held the shrine. There were lots of them. They picked it up from the saw horses it rested on, started chanting their chant, and bobbed along with it, but in the way one bobs when under the crushing weight of a highly sentimental object. Mr. Imai pushed Trey into the lineup of shrine carriers. The poor kid. Of course he is way taller than the other men, so a disproportionate amount of the weight was on his shoulder. After a week of telling me that shrine carrying is easy for women, Mr. Imai pushed me into the crowd of grunting/chanting men. He was somewhat right about the ease of shrine carrying. Though I am usually of comparable height to most Japanese people, I was much shorter than the men carrying the shrine. My shoulder didn't reach the support beam. Therefore I couldn't really help out with carrying any of the weight. I basically just held the beam and bobbed along with the rest of them. For a bit I tried to support as much weight as I could with my hand/wrist/arm, but I think it was more painful for me than it helped anyone else. The thing is so unbelievably heavy. After a bit Trey and I ducked out so actual contributing members of the team could do their job and we could give our nearly dislocated body parts a rest. Our efforts were rewarded with tiny beers and tiny styrofoam bowls full of sake. So were everyone else's once they finished a leg of the journey. The shrine stopped many times. The sawhorses were brought out and the shrine was rested in the middle of the street. Everyone drank and laughed together. We made friends with a guy from a float team parked right next to our shrine. We were talking to him when we witnessed a surreal slow motion crash.
There was an old man riding down the street on his three-wheeled mobility scooter. He was drunk out of his mind. Sidenote: public drunkenness/ drinking in public is totally socially permissible in Japan. Our mikoshi shrine is resting in the middle of the narrow street and a float is resting next to it. Lots of people were standing around enjoying themselves. The old guy just kept chugging along very slowly towards us. It was happening so slowly that no one paid much attention to it. Then all of a sudden he was right on top of us. Without slowing down or attempting to stop at all he came right up on a woman standing right next to us. He hit her at such a slow rate of speed that she didn't even think to react and get out of the way, and the front wheel of the scooter actually began to travel up her leg. She jumped out of the way and the front wheel of the scooter began to travel up the wall of paper signs she was standing in front of. The whole thing was happening at about 2 miles an hour. It seemed like slow motion. We were all looking on in amazement, but were strangely paralyzed. Continuing the slow motion disaster, the scooter kept riding up the wall at 2 mph and was tipping backwards. The old guy didn't let go for a second or seem particularly phased by the fact that he just hit a woman, his scooter was scaling a wall with him still on it, and the whole thing had just tipped over. The front wheel was in the air. The back of the scooter was on the ground. And the guy was now looking straight ahead at the sky instead of the road. He was still holding on to the handle bars, still seated in his capsized scooter. Some people tried to help him up and get his scooter working again, which took a bit of time. The old guy did not say a word. The whole thing was just so bizarre. Watching it in slow mo was a mixture of humor and shock. No one was really hurt, so we all stood around highly amused by what had just occurred. The old man's victim showed off the tire tread marks running up the leg of her white pants. She laughed about it.
On the way back to the shrine team's headquarters, while other people were carrying the shrine we made friends with some guys on the team. Shockingly they were actually our age, which is a rare thing in these parts. I talked to them for a long time and they were a lot of fun. Some spoke more english than others. So the conversation was largely a tag team effort. I hung out with them until it got late and I couldn't stave off exhaustion with beer anymore.
The next day Trey and I met my student Takahiro. He is one of my favorite students. He is our age and very cool. His hobby is taking care of his vegetable garden. He has traveled to every prefecture in Japan on two epic, lone motorcycle trips. He is very invested in learning English. In a very un-Japanese way he doesn't care about the business world or getting ahead in in some boring career. He works the night shift in a convenience store until April, when he will go to Canada for a year-long working holiday. He wants to work as a farm hand and hang out with Canadians.
Despite talking to him a lot after class, this was our first social outing. Trey, Takahiro, and I wandered around the festival. I ran into a lot of my students. First off we ate festival food. We had takoyaki (octopus inside tiny balls of batter-delicious), choco bananas, Yakimanju (a bread thing on a stick brushed with sweet, sticky soy sauce- its our regions specialty, but less than delicious), fried chicken bits, little cake things filled with cream or bright purple potato. Yum.
After eating and wandering for a bit, it was settled that we would go karaoke. People in Japan love karaoke. It was a little strange for me to go there in the middle of the afternoon, because I usually associate it with night time and drunkenness. But its very cheap during the day time and it did not strike Takahiro as strange. It was fun. Takahiro sang Japanese songs. Trey and i sang English songs. Takahiro gave his best attempt at some English songs. We sang Mr. Roboto in the spirit of reciprocity. Then things took a tragic turn. I had been fighting a cold and a sore throat all week. But it was festival weekend and I didn't want anything to slow me down. However, as I was singing my voice started to get a little rough... from the cold and all the alcohol consumption and staying up late. Then, my voice started cracking all over the place like a pubescent boy. My voice was strangely deep and scratchy and whispery. I could barely talk. i was a Karaoke casualty. It became even more of a problem later in the week, when I practically lost all of my voice and could barely teach my classes. Anyways, we ran into another one of my students and Takahiro's classmate. She was nice and drunk- happy and giddy. Then, despite my muteness, we went to dinner at a rotating sushi bar. I tried natto sushi for the first time. Natto is fermented beans that give off a really strong, foul odor. Having eaten (and liked them) is kind of a litmus test for foreigner for how assimilated you have become in Japanese culture. I have been asked at least 20 times if i have ever eaten natto. I didn't think the natto sushi was bad at all. I even liked it. Though later I bought some natto at the grocery store to eat at home and absolutely hated it. I don't know what this says about my relationship with Japan.

hippie commie pinko healthcare

Today I went to the hospital. My first little tango with the japanese healthcare system. Don't worry, it was nothing serious. I have been battling an annoyingly severe cold. The worst part is that I lost my voice. Yesterday I could barely conduct my classes. I could only talk in a raspy whisper. My voice cracked and did all sorts of weird stuff. I felt like a pubescent boy. The cold was doing me in, also the karaoke sunday afternoon put the nail in the coffin. There really isn't any way to be a teacher and conduct classes without the ability to speak, so I figured something needed to be done.
Japan has socialized healthcare. They have done this, amazingly, without falling into the hands of terrorists. And I have to tell you America, its pretty great, this healthcare thing. People get treated for things that otherwise they wouldn't bother going to the doctor for. Its fast, efficient, and cheap cheap cheap.
I am enrolled in the national healthcare program, so I just rolled up to the hospital on my bicycle. I walked in with no appointment. I even had a special request- an english speaking doctor- and they took care of me right away. Even though I went to the pharmacy counter instead of the reception area (those kanji signs aren't doing me any favors) the people were ridiculously helpful. The pharmacist, before processing my request for an English speaking doctor, popped in the back to find an English-speaking pharmacist to find out what the heck I wanted. Amazingly, out popped Tomoko, a woman I met at the festival who is part of the International Association. She was really excited/ surprised to see me, and even remembered my name. I however, was a shithead, and could not remember hers. She was really nice. I had the names of two doctors who take medical english at our schools who work at the hospital. She helped me track them down (though I don't think I ended up with either of them). She asked me what was wrong, took me to the right part of the hospital, and helped me fill out the symptom form. Another great thing about Japanese medicine, no ridiculous forms to fill out! I waited for only about ten minutes for the doctor to see me. The doctor is the only gripe I had about the whole experience. He was supposedly English speaking (and since I thought he was one of our students I had high expectations) but he barely spoke to me in English. He asked me if he could feel my lymph nodes on my neck, but didn't think to indicate to me that I needed my shirt off for a stethoscope lung-listening expedition. The next thing I knew my sweater was around my neck. But I am glad I got the warning about the neck node toughing, because you know, that might have made me uncomfortable. He said a lot of stuff to me afterwards in Japanese that I couldn't understand. I just looked blankly at him. Aside from that, all he said was "come back in 4 days." Was I going to get a prescription for medicine? Was I not going to get treated unless my symptoms persisted for another 4 days? What was it that I actually had? I tried to ask about the medicine. He said "yes, come back in 4 days". Still didn't really clear up the confusion. Then I waited for a little bit again in the waiting room with the cute little receptionist who called me Sarah-san. After another 10 minutes, she handed me a paper bill and walked me to the cashier desk. I paid the bill- a whopping $31 dollars and to my surprise a bag of my prescriptions were already there waiting for me. 6 different kinds of medicine! Its maybe a little excessive for a cold, but they sure are thorough. Also, $31 for a doctors visit and 6 different prescriptions. Amazing! I couldn't even walk into a doctors office in America for $31. Tomoko was there again to explain to me when to take the pills and how often. She went through every bag with me. She is very sweet. Without an appointment the whole thing, complete with requests for unusually qualified doctors, took an hour. Oh America, please please try.

Mt Fuji

Sunday 8/31= Fuji day. The myriad members of the Tomioka International Association met in front of Tomioka junior high school to embark on a day long Fuji site-seeing trip. We had to meet Mr. Imai first at 7 a.m. which was a bit painful. The tour bus was full of more foreigners than I ever thought could exist in Tomioka. Maybe its because I assumed they were all japanese until I heard them talking. There were maybe 20 chinese people, some Indonesians, a little Nepalese girl with her Japanese mom, and some other people who I didn't really get to talk to so i will never know. Then, of course, there were the Japanese teachers from the Japanese lesson aspect of Tomioka International Association. Trey and I were the most obvious, and only non-asian foreigners, but it was nice to know we weren't alone. I was also amazed because my morning Japanese class with Tomioka International Association has 3 students including me. The night class must be packed because there were so many people that I had never seen before.
Anyways, we all got on the bus and headed off to the mount Fuji. The bus was very crowded. The Japanese apparently had this genius idea to build extra seats that were collapsible, but when you needed them they could fold out into the aisle space. It of course takes a bit of forethought and coordination since once the seat is down no one can walk up and down the idea, so the idea never caught on in America. I had brought some Japanese flashcards on the bus to practice. Trey and I decided to ask the guy in the tiny fold out seat next to me a question we had about one of the flashcards. He couldn't really answer our question about the bizarre japanese object, because, as it turned out, he was Indonesian, not Japanese. He is a volunteer Japanese teacher at the night classes. He spoke better Japanese than us and pretty good English. Given those two facts, and the fact that we were all smashed together in the tiny alloted bus space, we decided to force him to be our buddy. We also forced his Indonesian friend to be our buddy too. Indonesian friend spoke less English though.
Our first stop was some mountain village place. You could buy lots of food and souvenirs and food souvenirs there. There were also some ponds with bright blue and yellow fish. One pond was a vary deep well looking thing that was evidently a spring from Mount Fuji. We drank water out of little metal cups. The water is supposed to be good for you. It tasted sweet and clean either way.
The next stop was a visitor center. It was distance away from mount Fuji. I guess the idea was that we would be able to see Mount Fuji and take pictures before we actually drove up the mountain. The best laid plans of mice and men. It was cloudy. The mountain was completely enwrapped in clouds. Every once in a while you could see a tiny slice poke out. I think the height of the mountain keeps the clouds there on a consistent basis. Only very rarely is there a clear view.
Next up was the fifth stage of Mount Fuji. Fifth stage is halfway up the mountain. It is the furthest point that you can drive up. The next half of the mountain is hiking over. There were lots of restaurants and souvenir shops in the area. The place was full of hikers stretching and getting ready for the long hike. There were lines of assembled hikers throwing their fists in the air and shouting the Japanese equivalent of "we can do it". We looked at part of the mountainside and the tiny, distant line of hikers winding up the mountain in between swaths of fog. Trey, our Indonesian friends Tiki and ???, and I ate a 5 minute lunch so we could get back to the bus at the appointed time. Turns out we were a half hour early, so we loitered around with the hikers.
But we weren't finished with Fuji yet. We bussed down the mountain again and went to a big lake. There were pedal-propelled swan boats, which reminded me of Boston. Mount Fuji was in the background. But to us Mount Fuji was just the giant clump of clouds. A few of us got ushered onto a small motor boat. We went on a whirlwind trip across the lake and back. The little Nepalese girl was in the back of the boat, being very cute. We enjoyed the speed and the views of the other mountains that weren't Fuji, which we could actually see. We regrouped with the land-bound ones and re-embarked for our final stop.
We drove and drove until we saw lots of little fields on peaches, strung up on lattices. Each peach has a tiny bag tied around it as it grows. The there were lattices full of grapes that had little napkin-like squares placed on top of each bunch of grapes. We ended up at a wine factory. There was a brief brief tour through the tiny factory. Then there we a tasting room. To be honest, i was really excited about the wine factory. Wine isn't very popular in Japan. Even though wine is my drink of choice in America and Europe, where I had at least a bottle a week habit, I have not been able to drink any wine since I have been Japan. However, I was in for some dreadful disappointment. Pretty much everything in the tasting room was a sweet wine or sweet fruit liqueur. Mind-numbingly sweet. The one or two "regular" wines they had there were pretty bad. They were flat and flavorless. And even though it might have just been a plain old red wine, it still tasted sweeter somehow. The tasting experience is very different too. Instead of someone pouring you sips of wine in wine glasses, you pick up a plastic cup and go to the numerous barrels set out in the room. The barrels are filled with ice and in the ice they set a punch bowl filled with whatever wine. you will your glass with a tiny metal pitcher attached to a rod. The ambiance was nil. Oh well. I guess it will be imported wine for me.
The rest of the story is boring from here. We hit traffic on the way back, making it a 4 hour drive back to Tomioka. Trey, who decided it would be a brilliant idea to only sleep for an hour the night before, slept in the seat next to me the whole way home with his body sprawled all into my personal space. I chatted with our buddies. There was a kareoke stint, with people singing old japanese songs. Our Indonesian buddies sang most of the songs. After we finally got back to Tomioka, Mr. Imai took us to a katsu restaurant. He made us eat lots of food and drink a giant mug of beer. The end.

My last day in Tokyo, though I didn't really spend much of it there. I tried to wake up and get going early, but it didn't quite happen that way. Eventually though, I got all packed up, checked out and headed to Kamakura. Kamakura is a city about an hour away from Tokyo by train. It was briefly the capital of the shogun government- from about 1100 to 1300. Because of this little flash in the sun, Kamakura has many, many temples, shrines, and other historical stuffs. most of the buildings were destroyed at one point or another by fire or storms or earthquakes. Nothing is really original, but as soon as something destroyed a temple, they rebuilt it exactly as it was. Some of the reconstructions are still pretty old. Some are from the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s. I wanted to go there to experience more of Japan's traditional past.
I also managed to somehow avoid the modern efficiency of Japan's present. I somehow got away with only paying $1.30 for an hour train ride. Anyways, I started off at Engaku-ji temple. Engaku-ji is a zen buddhist temple. Its a large complex of buildings. Its got a lot of trees surrounding it, so there is a nice atmosphere. A two-story pagoda-ed main gate lets you know you are entering a holy space... or maybe thats the foot-high wooden floor beam you just tripped over. I encountered some monks up in a high, out of the way garden. There were little statues nestled in the rock face in tiny caves. Some had tiny flower offerings. In the main part of the grounds there were white lilies growing everywhere.
The most important building here is the one that contains Buddha's tooth. yes, Buddha's tooth is enshrined here. The tooth is much too holy to be seen by us secular types, so you could not go inside the building. But I felt all tingly anyways, knowing the Buddha tooth was only a dozen yards away. There was also a collection of stone figures, which I assume were either deities or grave markers of famous people. Some had coin offerings. Some had coins stuck all over them, in any available crevice- the crook of a stone arm, in robe holds, on feet, on heads.
The literature on Engaku-ji touts its temple bell as the best site in the temple. Its a national treasure. It was made in 1301 and pretty much the only original things left of the shrine. The Japanese are very good about letting you know when you are about to see something important because they make you climb a ridiculous mountain or 200 flights of stairs before you can get to it. As you huff and puff your way up you think, man, this must be some awesome thing. It was a nice bell. Big and heavy-looking. I don't know much about bells, but it looked nice enough. In case the sight of the bell wasn't enough to reward the long hike up, they also had a little hut that served shaved ice with flavored syrup and sweet beans. As good as those beans on ice looked, I had lots of other temples to see that day.
Next up was Tokei-ji temple. It used to be a nunnery. Its also known as the divorce temple. Back in the old days, before there was legal divorce for women, mistreated or unhappy women used to come to the temple. They could seek refuge there from their husbands, who couldn't come on the grounds. If the woman stayed there for three years, she would be granted a divorce.
The place itself is small. It had an intimate little garden with a buddha statue. Most of the grounds were taken up by a large cemetery full of old nuns.
Nearby was Jochi-ji. Jochi-ji was also small. Its highlight was a set of three wooden statues. They represented the deities of past, present, and future. I am glad I have pamphlets for these kinds of things because they all looked like buddhas to me.
past present and future buddhas. There was a large Japanese style house with a big garden out front. Lots of butterflies were flittering about. There were also some crazy possessed cats running around, fighting each other in the garden. They had no tails. I think in Japan, bad luck travels on the tail of cats- so no tails, no bad luck. Much to my amusement, the god of happiness was lurking in some cave. He was an old man, and looked oddly deranged, being so happy in this dank, desolate cave. I guess the god of happiness is not picky.
At this point I stopped in a little restaurant and had some cold soba noodles, which you dip in soy sauce soup with onions and wasabi. Then I came to Kencho-ji, the granddaddy of Kamakura temples. Its the first ranked of the five great zen temples of Kamakura (I think I hit the other four as well). It is also the oldest zen training monastery in Japan. It is huge. There were more big gates and more big temple buildings. The coolest thing though, were the cypress trees. They were grown from seeds here, 700 years ago. So walking around in the middle of huge, gnarled 700 year old cypress trees was a nice sensation. There was another old bell from 1255. This bell was also nice, but I was much more excited about the pots of lotuses. Some of the lotuses were beginning to bloom. They were big. The entrance to one building was lined with dozens of big pots, full, of water, and growing lotuses. I took lots of pictures. There were buds, and opening flowers, and lots of the pod things with the seeds. I figured I couldn't spend all my time with the lotuses so I took off my shoes and went inside a big temple building. Around back was a little japanese garden with perfectly sculpted miniature hills, a pond, a few trees, and a meticulously clipped carpet of grass.
My last temple was Enno-ji. This was a teeny tiny one. It only had one building. That building, however, housed some awesome old statues. The main statue is of the god of hell (buddhist hell that is). His ten cohorts are also represented. These guys are responsible for determining what level of existence you will be reincarnated in, after you die. Basically they decide if you deserve to move up the reincarnation chain and start your next life over as something pleasant, or if you deserve an awful next existence. The statues have terrible, scary faces. They are supposed to scare you into being a better person. We'll see if it works.
After having walked across half of Kamakura, I hopped a train and went to another nearby town. This new place is home to the Great Buddha. He is a 40 foot bronze statue of Buddha that looms over pilgrims in his serene, beneficent way. Great Buddha was cast in 1252. The shrine that used to cover him got blown away by a tidal wave hundreds of years ago. They kept trying to build new ones to protect him, but they kept getting destroyed. Buddha himself is pretty resilient. Now they just let him hang out in the sunshine. I think its a good place for him to be. His dark green patina looks very nice against the blue sky. There were lots of people there to admire him. I made some of them take my picture. There were also some offerings of oranges and kiwis and flowers. It is also possible to go inside of the great buddha. His inside is hollow. I however did not go. The cost was high, and I can only imagine that it would be similar to being inside a dark, buddha-shaped submarine without any of the comforts.
After big Buddha, I bolted out of the Kamakura area. i wanted to catch the last bus out of Tokyo to Tomioka. I had allotted myself two hours, which I thought would be sufficient. However after many annoying snafus, including not being able to find the locker where I had left my bags, I missed the bus. I thought I was really in the shitter because I was under the impression that taking the train back using local trains, as opposed to the much more expensive bullet trains, would take around 5 hours. As it was already past 7 pm, I was a tad worried about this. However, I was very determined to get home. Mostly because I had nowhere to stay in Tokyo. The train information guy directed me to the Takasaki bound train. When I asked a guy waiting on the platform if the train he was waiting for was going to Takasaki he said no and then left his place in line, went downstairs to ask when the Takasaki train would come... all just for me. After he left I was a bit anxious about how long the train would take and if there would be any connecting trains still running to get me from Takasaki to my village once I got there. But since Japanese people are ridiculously nice, another man, who I asked about it reassured me that it would only take 2 hours. The first 30 minutes of the train ride I was smashed in among a gazillion other commuters. I am sure they hated me because I had my huge red hiking backpack, my laptop bag, and my huge canvas purse-bag. I took up so much room and my backpack kept getting in the way of the door. After a while though, i muscled my way to a seat and waited my two hours. I arrived back in Tomioka finally. I was exhausted, but glad to be home. 6 days in Tokyo is really exhausting. I waddled with all my bags to my apartment. I piqued the interest of some quasi- english speaking business men on the way. They wanted to know what the hell some american girl was doing with these huge bags slung all over her, walking down the street of some nowhere town at 10 at night. I tried to explain to them that i live here. They didn't seem to get that though because they kept asking me if i was walking to my hotel and were amazed that I had backpacked all the way to Tomioka for god knows why. I finally made it home to my own little child's bed though. It was a good feeling.

Summer Vacation- TOKYO - day five

I started with Ebisu. Its not a hugely popular district in Tokyo, but it has some worthwhile attractions. I started the day early. Mostly because I was in search of pants, as the Japanese call them. Through some strange lack of foresight, I had packed less underwear than there were days in my trip. So I was searching for pants, but no pants, no pants. Pantsless, I hung around waiting around some financial buildings waiting for the photography museum to open.
The photography museum was one of the things that I was most looking forward to in Tokyo. I fantasized about all the crazy,, modern Japanese photography I was going to see. All the bizarre video installations of performance art... But of course, I was sure to be disappointed. When I got to the museum, the front desk girl informed me that two of the three floors were closed in preparation for a new exhibit. Its ok I thought. At least there is still one floor of a Contemporary Asian photo goodness. Then I looked at my ticket. The only exhibit in the whole place was for stupid Early American Photography. I didn't come halfway across the world to see American photography. Also early photography is really not my cup of tea. Photos of civil war generals and old family portraits don't really do a whole lot for me. I cruised around there for a while, and then went to the second floor to maybe catch a glimpse of what they were putting up for the new exhibit. Of course, the string of ironies was not complete. I picked up the poster for the next exhibit that was opening that weekend. Of course it was everything that I had wanted to see in the first place. Morimura, (one of my favorite, and weirdest, Japanese photographers), Julian Opie, Sam Taylor-Wood (a photographer that I wrote part of my thesis one), and a bunch of other pretty awesome looking photographers were going to be represented. It was a maddening little discovery... but I guess its an excuse to go back to Tokyo for the weekend. One redeeming factor if the photography museum was the 15 foot tall reproductions of famous photos on the outside of the building- including my favorite Doisneau.
After the disappointing photography the next logical step was to go to the beer museum. Ebisu has an old factory for Yebisu beer that closed, but the reopened it as a museum for the beer brand. It was free and contained beer, so what the hell. I was followed in by Henri, an out of place french guy, who tried to pick me up. After having to endure being told that I reminded him of his French girlfriend who died in a helicopter accident. I shook him off and looked through the tiny tiny exhibits. Then I headed to the tasting lounge. I enjoyed a glass of cold Japanese beer. I left for Uenoa little happier.
Once in Ueno, my search for pants resulted in a victory at Uniqlo. I ate a ridiculous crepe on the street that was filled with custard, strawberries, bananas, and chocolate. Then I went to the Museum of Western art. I had been seeing posters all over town for the Corot exhibit. I decided to opt for the Corot exhibit in addition to the permanent collection. The Corot part was full of people. I realized that I don't really like Corot. I only like the two paintings of his used to advertise the exhibit. I guess it was good marketing on their part. A bit of a waste of time on mine. The regular exhibit had a lot of renaissance and biblical paintings. I guess thats the exotic stuff for Easterners. There were also some Impressionist stuff including a Monet waterlillies.
To add to the pants success I also finally had success finding an english language bookstore that wasnt astronomically priced. I went back to the hostel for some napping action. Then it was off to Shinjuku in search of Jetee. Jetee is a little bar in the Golden Gai section of Shinjuku. Its run by a film buff and is a tribute to Chris Marker's film La Jetee. I was kind of amazed that anyplace, especially a bar, would be dedicated to a rarely watched, but amazing, blackand white art film. I heard about it back in the states. I decided that I had to go. I wrote part of my thesis on this film and I watched it a lot. Its pretty incredible- a movie made out of photo stills with crazy metaphysical twists and turns. The decision to go was easy. Actually getting there was not. The Golden Gai is notoriously difficult to navigate. Its made of tiny alleys, with tiny tiny places all crowding for space. I did the thing where i stand in front of the big map on the street with my guidebook map in my hand and study both until I figure it out. A very nice, handsome japanese man asked me in Japanese where I was going. I told him I wanted to go to a temple that we near Jetee. I figured that it would be too confusing to try and tell him where it was i was actually trying to go. i thought If I just got the temple I would only be a block or two away and it would be easy to find. Instead of just telling me where to go, the man started walking. He was taking me there himself! Only in Japan. He asked me why I wanted to go to the temple now. I realized that it all msut seem really stupid- I was trying to go to a temple at 9 at night, when the temple has been closed for hours. i explained where I wanted to go and why. We chatted in English on the way there. I think much of the incentive for escorting me to the bar was an opportunity to practice English. Also, he was very helpful. When we got to the area, we still couldn't really find it. My man asked another guy who was standing outside of a theater. He took the two of us right to it. My man told me to have a good time. I thanked him and he went on his way again. That would never happen in America.
Jetee had a heavy black door with simple black letters that said Jetee. That was all there to identify it. The bar was up a very narrow flight of stairs. The place was ridiculously small. It was perhaps the size of a walk in closet. Its maximum capacity was maybe 8 people. it was clean but dingy. When I had heard that the place was decorated with film stills from La Jetee, I swear I had seen a picture of a ceiling literally covered with overlapping photos. I must have hallucinated this image or it must have been from some other place, because here "covered" meant three film stills on the wall. Maybe given the microscopic size of the place "covered" was not too much of a stretch. There were some other posters of art films around. When I came in there were a group of three blue-collar men sitting there smoking cigarettes and drinking. It was a bit of a strange sight. They were obviously regulars, given the mama-chan's banter with them. But these men obviously knew nothing about film, let alone western film, and here they must come every night for there after work drinking. I felt a little awkward in there, in such an intimate spot, all by myself, taking in the atmosphere. The owner though, spoke perfect english and we chatted intermittently about movies and such, The rest of the time I just sipped my drink, looked around, and wrote in my notebook.

Summer Vacation- TOKYO - day four

On tuesday I decided to go to Senso-ji temple. Its probably the major temple in the inner Tokyo area. It was founded in the seventh century for a tiny gold statue that some fishermen caught in a net. I got off at the nearest railway station, though I didn't know it, I would have to walk a half an hour to the temple. Along the way I ogled the American groceries in an import food store. I was helped by a man waiting for the crosswalk, as I looked very confused with my map open, searching in vain for a street sign. He asked "May i help you?". Even in Tokyo the people are so polite. I made it to the temple. There were lots of people around. Some Nepalese guy who conveniently lost his friends tried to make me his temple-seeing buddy. i conveniently lost him in the crowd.
There is a long, long market in front of the temple. Its got people selling everything. People are selling religious items, souvenirs, food, clothes, green tea ice cream, freshly grilled rice crackers, postcards, and random crap. I bought some postcards for my postcard collection and some green tea ice cream to cope with the ridiculous heat. i passed on the random crap though. The temple was very nice. Nothign really out of the ordinary as far as Japanese temples go, except for it being a temple in the middle of a crazy metropolis. As you looked at the pagoda there were the tops of rides from nearby fun park in your view. There was a little Japanese garden with a koi stream out back. There were tiny little shrines mixed in the garden. Shrines to what?, I have no idea.
After seeing most of the temple I wandered around some nearby streets that were supposed to be reminiscent of "old tokyo". There were some traditional sorts of shops, but by some sheer luck there was a real part of old tokyo. Three young (still in the sumo schooling process) sumos were out walking around. Two were dressed in traditional yukatas and have the traditional sumo hairstyle. The third one was a little too cool for school and was just wearing modern clothes. Since, of course, it would be unfeasible to see a sumo wrestler for more than 30 seconds and not see them eating, they stopped and bought ice cream. They walked along eating there ice cream and adding it to their not-yet-admirable girth. The too cool for school one dropped his one the ground. because of the unspoken 30 second eating rule, they all went back to the ice cream stand and got him another one. He needed all the fattening up opportunities he could muster.
After Senso-ji, I headed back to the elusive kite museum. This time I had all the free time I needed and a knowledge of where this place actually was. The kite museum was actually one of my favorite things that I saw in Tokyo. It was very small- just a floor in a narrow building. It was perhaps twice the size of my apartment. In it though, were a bazillion kites. There were all kinds of kites. There were small kites, big kites, old kites, traditional kites, kites shaped like birds, insects, squids, ships, and painted like all sorts of things. The things painted on the kites could have been actual paintings. They were very elaborate and beautiful. I think that it is mostly one guy, or a very small kite association that is mostly organized by one guy, who collects all of these kites. I really love it when people pick something obscure, like kites, to be ridiculously passionate about. I thought it was awesome that that guy devoted himself to kites for whatever reason. Its so pointless and romantic. The kites were awesome though. The place was packed with them. On the way out the lady gave me an origami jumping frog.
I finished off the day at Rikugi-en garden. I figured I should pepper my trip with some visits to green, quiet spaces, so as not to get too overwhelmed by city. Rikugi-en is, what my guidebook calls, a classical Edo-period stroll garden. i don't know precisely what it means, but the garden was originally from the 1690s-1700s. Not a lot of the original garden survives, but enough did. Its still a big garden by today's standards. There was lots of tightly trimmed grass with fenced off paths. In the middle was a big lake with some islands in it. Most exciting was a little stone bridge with clustering turtles. When you walked over the bridge, the turtles in the water beneath came swimming over to the spot underneath where you were. I guess people must feed them. Either that or those turtles really like the look of tourists gawking back at them

Summer Vacation- TOKYO - day three

For the past few days I had been sort of marveling at the ease of traveling alone... how unstressful this trip to Tokyo had been and how my expectations of it being a completely overwhelming city were not the case. Since I am traveling by myself, there are no real time restraints. I only need to wake up in time for breakfast and be back at the hostel before curfew. I don't have to worry about meeting someone at a specific time, or take into account someone else's tourist schedule. I go where i want, when I want to. When I get tired, i take a break an relax- have a cup of coffee somewhere. When i get hungry, I stop and eat. Best of all, no compromising what things I want to see. Also, i think, when you are traveling with someone else you worry even more about getting lost. By myself, I can just wander around without any particular aim in mind. Eventually I will find my way back to the train station, museum, etc.
Also, Tokyo seems relatively empty. Not really empty, since its Tokyo, but there aren't hoards of people battling there way, politely, through each other to get where they are going. Its O-ban now, a special Japanese holiday. Its one of the three major holidays in Japan. It lasts roughly a week, and its when most people go back to the homes of their parents and honor the dead in the their family. usually it involves cleaning the graves of your family members, leaving an offering or two, and then inviting the ghost back to your family home where you have a big dinner waiting for them and you. Basically, many people that live in Tokyo have left the city to celebrate in whatever place they came from. The crowds now are just light crowds. I am not smashed like a sardine on the train.
Long story, short I was feeling really at ease touristing Tokyo. I even help clueless Americans buy their tickets in the train stations. So far no problems finding places. The gazillion train and subway lines hadn't been a problem. Everything: smooth. That was until today of course. Perhaps it had something to do with adding another person to the mix. Perhaps it was karma. I was supposed to meet Wade at Ueno at noon. I finish breakfast at 8:30 so I figured I had a little time to do something before I met up with him. I decided to go to Nihombashi to find the English language bookstore and then go to the Kite museum when it opened at 11. I found the bookstore no problem. I browsed in there for a while and then left 20 minutes to eleven so that I would be at the kite museum exactly when it opened. It seemed nearby. I started walking in the direction i thought it was. But for some reason i couldn't get my bearings with the map. Nothing looked kite-like. I even hopped on the subway to get to a closer station. I just wandered and wandered. It kept getting later and later. It got so late that I wouldn't even have to time to go inside when I found it, since I had to meet Wade. However, I was annoyed at the Kite museum's elusiveness. I had even found a map on the street that said it was just across the road. But i could not see the sign- I could not see one single kite. I kept looking though because I wanted to know where it was in case i decided to give the museum another chance. Finally, I found a tiny wrought iron sign, no bigger than a sheet of paper, that was conveniently the same color as the building it was attached to. It said kite museum. Feeling slightly victorious, but mostly cheated I ran to get back to the train station. i was already running a little late to meet Wade. i got a bit lost trying to find the train station too. I got to practice some japanese though and asked a Tokyo stock exchange minion on the street. I arrived at the Ueno station only ten minutes late. Wade told me to meet him in front of the hard rock cafe. I ran out what was called the central exit. All I saw though was the zoo and an art museum. Down the road a piece was a lot of lights and buildings, so I figured the hard rock cafe must be down there. i walked and walked, but didn't see it. I asked someone in Japanese, they said they didn't know. wade said that I couldn't miss it, so I figured it had to be within sight of one of the exits from the train station. I decided to just start walking around the station until I saw it. I ended up walking for 45 minutes. I was really frustrated. i figured Wade probably left since I was almost an hour late. Finally I went back inside the station to ask at the information desk. The woman said it was just straight across the way. And there it was. Not to be missed. But INSIDE the train station. The whole time I had been outside the train station. I couldn't believe it. the whole time I kept thinking- what a stupid place for a hard rock cafe. Unbelievably, Wade was still there waiting. he said he kept telling himself that he would leave after a half hour, then after 45 minutes, then after an hour. The crazy Tokyo fashion was amusing him as he waited though. lucky for me, he waited.
We went down this shopping alley with all sort of little shops. We ate kebabs and pineapple on a stick. We looked at funny t-shirts with bad English one them. We passed old men selling eels and fruit. After shopping around for a bit, we walked to Akihabara- the place with all the electronics. It was a bit if a walk, but we made ti there all the same. We went to Yodabashi camera- a 10 floor electronics store. I was starting to feel really tired from the day. My feet were also hurting from these new shoes I had bought. So we sat upstairs in the food court until I felt well enough to go on.
Then we went to an arcade. Wade and I played a car racing game. Then we decided to go downstairs and get our pictures taken in one of the photo booths. The photo booth had all these crazy graphics in the pictures. They were going to be so awesome. However, when it was all over, we couldn't find where the pictures printed. there was no slot anywhere. We looked around the room an nothing. We decided to give it a shot at another machine. We went into one promising looking one with pens that helped you select things. We thought we were picking the backgrounds to the photos we were going to take. We started going crazy with silly backgrounds and putting pineapples and octopi on our pictures. We had been doing this for a while when we realized that all the sample pictures were of the same girls, and they weren't the ridiculously primped Japanese girls that are usually in the demos. Then Wade said "wait, there isn't a camera in here. shit, lets get out of here fast". We ran out of the booth and the girls that were in the "sample" pictures were standing right there. We bolted past them and down the stairs and out of there as fast as we could. Turns out, the photo booth we were in had a two step process. You take the photos on one side and electronically decorate them on the other. We had stumbled into the second part and had putting all sorts of goofy crap all over these girls pictures and essentially ruining them. Luckily we were out of there before there was hell to pay.
I walked back to Ueno with Wade. We said our goodbyes and then I went back to the hostel for a nap. It was dark when I got up. I went to Ikebukaro- the part with the huge department stores. I wanted to find another English language bookstore there, but couldn't so i just wandered around. Then I went to Shinjuku and wandered there too. I saw some skyscrapers and then dragged myself back to the hostel to the sento.

Summer Vacation- TOKYO - day two

I woke up, had some breakfast (complete with salad), and set off into the world. To the very heart of Tokyo to be exact. I spent the afternoon in the area surrounding the Imperial palace. The first stop was Yasukuni-jinja. Its a shrine to the Japanese legions sacrificed in wars since 1869. It is the most controversial shrine in Japan. It was a huge symbol during the nationalist push that preceded WWII. Kamikaze pilots, war criminals, and ordinary Japanese soldiers all have a home here. Aside from a collection of ikebana arrangements and the largest shrine gate I have ever seen, there wasn't anything remarkable about the shrine except for its history.
I walked past a watchtower left over from Edo castle. This led me into the big park called Kitanomaru-koen. There were lots of trees and park-like things. there was also the judo hall left over from the last olympics. I wandered through the park, and though I had no intention of going there, I found myself at the Imperial palace grounds. They let you in the grounds but the actual palace is completely out of sight from pretty much everywhere in Tokyo. There were big walls and a deep deep moat. After a bit of that i headed over to my main destination. The National Museum of Modern Art. Its a smallish museum with four floors. There were some western artists represented there, but mostly it was japanese early modern art. A big part of it might have been western art anyways. I kept walking around thinking, this must be a Matisse, this must be a Pisarro. But it would be some Japanese name I had never heard of. The copying of style was pretty much exact. I wonder if the french artist and the japanese artists were somehow all working together in the same vein or if the Japanese painters just took the french as a direct influence. There were some cool, more traditional style japanese art there, like some long hand scrolls. There were also some pretty awesome print series.
The museum people had me wear a big sticker with a camera on it, like a badge so i could run around and take pictures. I guess they wanted to make sure I had been adequately schooled in the acceptable methods of museum photography. There were also some pretty cool Julian Opie video pieces about Japan. They were based from very traditional Japanese scenes, like the ones you would see in ukiyo-e prints. But they still had elements of modern life in them. There was one of a lake and a bridge, but it was a modern bridge with traffic going over it. You could hear the noise of the cars going by. There was another one of city lights being reflected in water. I think these were my favorite part of the museum.
After the museum I went to Harajuku, because it was sunday and thats when all the crazily dressed kids come to the train station to hang out and look at each other. Unfortunately it was raining. Perhaps it was the rain, or maybe because it was a holiday, but it was a disappointing turnout for kids dressed weird. I did see a few and i tried to take some pictures. There was an alley crammed with shops. It was also crammed with people. Down this street was a shop for every kind of cute, useless thing. It was packed with teenagers buying jewelry and cheap clothes and trinkets. I did some shopping myself. After battling the crowds and the rain for a while, i was tired so I went into a coffee shop to sit around and drink something hot. I was in there for a while and when i came out, someone had stolen my umbrella. I was pissed, because it was still raining... also it was my first experience with Japanese crime (mostly relegated to umbrellas and bicycles). But I guess umbrella stealing is not so bad on the grand scale of things. I discovered the street I thought I was supposed to be on. It was a large tree lined street full of designer shops... fendi, dior, ralph lauren, harry winston.... It was nice to just look in the window. More importantly though, I found some galleries along this street. There was one for a popular japanese artist who paints spunky little cartoon girls. i bought some postcards there. I also found whitespace Tokyo and another little gallery that had some interesting photos of x-rayed bird skeletons. It was nice to see these galleries, and also going to the museum. I feel since I have been to japan, that part of me has been put on the back burner. I didn't realize until I got to Tokyo how much I missed it. I forgot how important it was to me. Since I stopped working at the Portland art museum and since i graduated from school, its just not a world I have much exposure to anymore.
I finished the night off with a trip to Shibuya, where Hatchiko, the famous dog statues is swarmed with people outside the train station. There were lots of people on the street and lots of lights. More excitingly though, I saw more crazy Japanese fashion.

Summer Vacation- TOKYO - day one

Tokyo Tokyo Tokyo. Sprawling metropolis of my imagination. Its just a two hour bus ride from Tomioka to Ikebukaro station in Tokyo. For only $20 you can go from a tiny city in the rice paddies to the biggest/ densest/ baddest city on the planet. I did just that.
I got off the bus in Ikebukaro. Ikebukaro is famous for having two of the most gigantic department stores in the country of gigantic department stores. I wandered around in the streets for a bit and was tempted to take a look inside some of these shopping meccas, but the big red backpack I was carrying (which always seemed to be in danger of whapping some poor commuter in the face) and my laptop bag made me think twice. I was already pretty tired of schlepping these bags around and I really wasn't ready to risk leaving a wake of overturned mannequin carnage behind me. I decided to head to my hostel and wait for the check in time. Then I could be rid of my stuff and merrily on my way.
I very easily got to Iidabashi station. Even i was surprised at this. Feeling a bit hungry, I found a grocery store inside the train station, bought some tea, and headed to the tables outside to eat the peanut butter pod sandwiches I had brought with me. I don't know if fate decided to be cruel to me just then or if it was random irony. I hadn't really seen it as I left the grocery store to sit down, but right next to the tables set out for your casual lunch was a series of displays (photos and captions) on the Nagasaki atomic bombing. It was a whole wall of blown-up historical photos. The other tables were occupied by old Japanese couples. There was an old man who was looking at the photos and he kept shaking his hands in the air. I imagined it was a why, why whhyyyy gesture. I was too scared to look over and see if he was giving me dirty looks as did this. As one might might imagine I was feeling a little awkward about this situation, being from the big, bad atomic bomb dropping country and all. Also, I don't particularly enjoy looking at photos of seared flesh as I eat my peanut butter pods. I ran out the door and found a bench outside that was free of any extraordinary japanese-american tensions.

After the delicious pods, i was ready to get to the hostel. I had a map to find the hostel already drawn in my notebook, I braced myself for the final stretch. As i was in the middle of bracing, it started pouring. In Japan, in summer, it never rains a little. It rains like it will never rain again and no umbrella is going to save you. Even though the hostel looked close, there was no way I was going to tramp around in all that rain looking for it. I had to wait it out. I went back in the train station... had a snack... looked at some shops... it was still raining, so I looked at some more shops. Then as the rain died down to an acceptable level I looked in my guidebook to find a more detailed map of where it was. I read the description of the hostel and it said, located above Iidabashi station, Tokyo International hostel is.... I thought, this can't be right. My hand drawn map had me leaving the station. But sure enough, I walked through some doors and there was an elevator with my hostel on the 18th floor. All that waiting and rain avoiding and the hostel was in the same building that i was in. On the upside, all that stalling mean that It was check-in time by the time I got there. The hostel is big- 2 floors of a skyscraper. The room i stay in has 8 people in it. one of them is a middle-aged Japanese woman. I am pretty sure she is crazy. Also she never leaves the room.
It was after afternoon by the time I got settled. I walked along what appeared to be a popular street in Iidabashi. There were some cute shops and a lot of promising restaurants. Then I went back to the train station and headed towards Akihabara. I decided to go to Akihabara because its one of those places that everyone who goes to Tokyo must go. The part of interest is called Electric Town. Its full of big, 5-story buildings selling discount electronics- computers, cameras, televisions, air conditioners, rice makers, etc etc. The streets are lined with these places. And of course they all have big neon lights and people shouting/ inviting you in on the street and television screens on the outsides of buildings. I don't have much of an interest in discount electronics. The electronics I want, ironically cost more in japan than in the U.S., where usually every other kind of electronic is super cheap in Japan. But anyways, I decided to go and see what there was to be seen. it was still kind of a rainy/ crappy day so I didn't want to try and do something I was excited about and then have it rain on my. Akihabara seemed like a good place to waste a rainy afternoon on.
I got to the station and as you come out there are girls dressed in maid costumes handing out fliers to something. They are japanese gothic, anime style maids. There was a small collection of them as I was both coming and leaving. Apparently its some sort of tradition, because you can always expect them to be there. I even saw souvenir cookies with maids on them. Basically, there were just electronics everywhere. And Pachinko parlors too. I was drawn into a 5 floor pachinko parlor by the promise of a big hundred yen shop on the top floor. There was no hundred yen store, but there were hundreds of people leaning over flashing, whirring pachinko machines, furiously smoking cigarettes. Girls in slutted-up sailor moon costumes wandered the rows of machines. Also keeping an eye on the scene was a buff guy with dyed silver hair, a leaf garland, a furry silver loin cloth and some silver fur boots. I tried in vain to snap a picture of him.
After a few hours of this amusement I headed back to Iiadabashi. I was tired and not in the mood to fuss much over food. So I went to the Japanese version of fast food. I love these little restaurants, they are pretty ingenious. The kind that I went to i set up like a bar with lots of stools all lined up. You walk in and there is a little vending machine looking thing in the corner. On the vending machines are buttons, usually with pictures, of everything on the menu. You put your money in, press the button of your choosing, and out pops a ticket. You sit down at the bar, the guy takes your ticket, and about three minutes later your food is brought to you. I had rice with sauteed meat, kimche and some seaweed ribbons. Its ridiculously efficient and also requires no Japanese language skills. Its an interesting place. The food is good, but I have pretty much only seen men eating there, always by themselves, who leave immediately after eating. It must be some kind of bachelor haven.
Full of rice, I went back to the hostel for bath time. The hostel has its own sento, or public bath. Its a lot like the onsens, except without the atmosphere and the spring water. You go up there, take a shower, wash yourself over and over. Then there is a mall pool full of hot water. I soaked in there for a tiny bit. It was nice. You could almost see all the lights from the city from the window while you sat in the tub, if the glass wasn't fogged up. There was a dinosaur of an old japanese woman in the sento as well. She was possibly less than 4 feet tall and had scraggly little beard.
The day finished with me closing the curtains around my little sleeping pod.

I should have posted this a month ago

The blog keeps going unblogged. Life is taking up a lot of my time nowadays. Planning lessons still seems to take up a lot of my time and focus. The teaching has been going fairly well, but there have been some bumps in the road too. I'll have a really good class and then the next class will go just awfully, or vice versa. Today I had a class that I got into a pretty bad funk over. They used to be a really good bunch of kids, but I suppose its my own fault for not being really strict with them from the start. I let a few things slide in the beginning and now they are spiraling out of control. Rowdiness, whining, constant Japanese speaking, inattentiveness, general boundary testing. Its just one of those things that happens, but it doesn't feel particularly good. to get some order back to the class I will have to be incredibly strict to make up for my prior laxness. I will have to wear my German Uber-disciplinarian hat. We'll see how that goes.
On a more optimistic note, fun stuff happened to me too. Three weekends ago (gee, I really haven't been keeping up with stuff, have I) one of Trey's students took us to the Japanese pub. The student, Kio, is a 50 year old BMX bike racer. He took Trey and I out after class on a friday night. He ordered us these huge platters of sushi and sashimi, plus salad, sausage, fries, bright blue eggplant, pickled cucumbers, and of course many gigantic mugfuls of beer. I thought I was going to explode. One thing I really love about Japan is that your friends order for you, and if they are Japanese, they usually pay too. In exchange we just have to speak ridiculously slowly and engage in very basic small talk that just-learning-english-japanese-friend can understand. After all the eating and drinking at the Japanese pub, Kio suggested that we all amble down the street tot he darts bar. He had the bartender make me a drink that is apparently very famous in Japan because it is mentioned by Hemingway in the Old Man and the Sea. it was awful, but it was a small sacrifice to be made for literary trivia. I also discovered that I am freakishly good at darts. If the teaching thing doesn't work out, maybe I will become a professional dart shark in Japan.

So I suppose many things have happened since my last post. I started my first week of teaching and I moved into my apartment finally. I got into a bicycle accident and was tricked into eating liver. I drank beer with my boss and I am going to Disneyland. I committed horrible faux pas and I made Junior high girls giggle again. I can't figure out how to make an international phone call, but I discovered an espresso machine under my kitchen sink.
Since I left off last, I continued my observation week... meeting all of my classes. Turns out i was a little grumpy and pre-judgmental (shock) my first week. Jason, the teacher I took over for, turned out to be a pretty cool guy. He has a Japanese wife and a baby that live a couple hours away from here. He wasn't the best teacher ever, but he was inexperienced, just like me, and hey, these kids can be tough. Its easy to just let the chips fall where they may with them. the other teacher Trey, turns out, is actually my cup of tea. In a place where hardly anyone understands you, its nice to have someone around who appreciates my sarcasm and can dish it right back to me. I don't think Japan has cultivated the dry sense of humor yet. We commiserate and also laugh/cry over the third teacher Melanie, who we both find to be sometimes excruciating company.
Melanie is a whole other story. During observation week I had to live with her in her tiny apartment, since my apartment was still occupied. She is a nice girl at heart, and about 7 years older than me. Her fatal flaw though is that she talks INCESSANTLY. If you ask her a simple question, she gives you a forty minute explanation. From the moment she walked in the door at night to the moment she went to sleep there was not 5 minutes of silence. This is no exaggeration. I would try to write emails to my parents or read a book. I could not even type a full sentence without being interrupted. I had to give up on the book. I don;t know if silence terrifies her, or if she was just really excited to have someone around at home. This maybe doesn't seem so bad, but in the hours upon hours of conversation I was subjected to, none of it was interesting or stimulating to me, She just said all of her thoughts out loud. Melanie seems incapable of judging when people are interested or not, as she will continue having a conversation with the back of your head after you walk away from her. After 5 nights of over 3 hours of straight talking I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The other teachers where helping me plot an escape. I can't take that much socialization. After a while anxiety, boredom, frustration, and violated boundaries come together into a seething mass of antisocialness and the only release I can think of is to break through the sliding glass door and jump out the window. I nearly did, but then Jason moved out of my apartment.
My new apartment is small. I imagine that only apartments in New York City are this small. But I live in the country in Japan, which means that my apartment is bigger than the poor kids who live in the big japanese cities. My washing machine is in my kitchen. There is no dryer- such things don't really exist here. If I stretched out my arms I could touch all four walls in my bathroom. The same knobs control the sink and the shower. The kitchen and bathroom are very small. The bedroom/ living room is decently sized. there are no chairs. I sit on a little cushion on the floor and eat at a low table (with a heater built into the underside for winter!) that also has the television on it. My bosses were really nice and bought me a bed my first day in the apartment, Its hard and looks like a child's bed, but its nicer than sleeping on a futon. I also have a little balcony to let the breeze in. More importantly though, it has a clothesline strung across it so I can dry my clothes.
On Friday, Jason had his last day. After work, The Imais (our bosses) took Jason, Trey, Melanie, and I to the Izakaya. Its name was Alfalfa. An izakaya is a Japanese pub where you hang out after work, drink beer (or whatever), and eat whatever foods they happen to have available. It was a good time. It turned out to be fourth of July that day, though it took me almost the whole day to realize it. It was nice though to celebrate in even a small, non-american way. Randomly, the pub had an interesting choice of decoration, which included an american flag right behind our table, complete with biker Santa Claus.
After the Imai's took us teachers home for the night we ventured out again to the darts bar for more fun and to harass some reluctant Japanese bartenders into playing darts with us. I was actually good, despite not knowing anything about darts. I beat almost everybody there.
I also got into a little bike accident that week while trying to avoid a big truck. No real bike rules in Japan. I tried to jump a small curb ramp to get onto the side walk and off of the road. The curb and the bike did not agree. I ended up falling with the bike onto the sidewalk, So did my laptop which was in the bike basket. As I was picking myself up off the curb, I looked around at the cars parked at the light. They were all staring straight ahead, which means they saw everything and out of embarrassment for me decided to politely pretend like nothing had happened. I had some scrapes and bruises, but nothing serious. The laptop survived and is just slightly more bent than usual.

More news of the teaching and Dsineyland should follow shortly.