Two roads? More like two hundred

My brain hurts. I have so many things to think about or worry about at the moment: getting ready to leave Japan, actually leaving, where to work when I get back to NZ, where to live, whether to study and how much. If that wasn’t enough, I’ve also got to make a decision whether to take my heavy and nearly dead Compaq notebook back to NZ or to scrap it here, whether I will replace it with a Mac or start using Vista, and whether to get another notebook or to buy a desktop. So much to think about and only so much brain power to think with.

It would be such a pain to take my Compaq home. It is one of the main things I have been worrying about in regards to the move back to NZ. It weighs 7kg just for the computer itself. It was horrible to carry here in the first place; I killed my shoulder doing it. Also, I do have another (much lighter) computer that I will have in my hand luggage. How awkward would it be to carry two computers with me from Japan to New Zealand? I would probably have to pay so much to send it back, more than the computer is actually worth since the battery died and replacements are no longer available. It’s loud, it runs hot, the access speed of the hard drive is terrible, it doesn’t have a USB 2.0 port only two 1.1 ports, there is only 256MB of RAM, the plastic shell has cracked in one place and scratched in many others. But it’s a computer. It’s served me as best as it has been able to for the last 4 1/2 years. I feel kind of like I am betraying it by thinking of leaving it behind.

I’m pretty sure that I’m ready to defect to Mac. I simply can’t be bothered fighting with yet another Windows system that no doubt has a million bugs in it. I’ve been looking at the online Apple store and I can’t decide whether I should get another notebook computer i.e. Macbook and use it as a desktop replacement (the best option if I were to up and move to another country again) or to actually get a desktop computer (such as iMac) which are the best ergonomically and have more features than notebook computers. I hope to find time to visit an Apple store while I’m in Tokyo this weekend. I want to actually meet a Macbook and an iMac. Then I might know by feeling which model to get.

One thing I am definitely looking to buy is an EyeTV tuner or similar TV Tuner that would let me watch TV on my computer. Theoretically I would never ever have to buy a TV because those things even let you hook up a VCR or game console. The TV quality is not yet quite what one would get on a real TV, but I think I could cope.

About Tokyo: I met with Sumiko on Sunday and we talked about where we want to go in Tokyo. On Saturday we are planning on going to the Edo Museum and the Ghibli Museum, and then apparently Sumiko’s sister will take us to eat Sumo food. Sumo food is a type of stew. I like stews, so I’m looking forward to it. On Sunday morning Sumiko will be busy so I will go to the National Museum by myself. After that, if we have time we want to ride the crazy ‘only in Tokyo’ futuristic ferry Himiko. On Monday we will shop. Apparently Lush now has branches open in Japan and Sumiko wants to visit one. I’m all for shopping at Lush again. I’ve only been in a Lush store once (in Milton Keynes) but it left a big impression on me. I actually gave Sumiko a round of applause when she came up with the idea of going to Lush. We will probably also visit Kinokuniya, a big bookstore chain. I don’t really need any more books at the moment, but unfortunately the biggest Kinokuniya in all of Japan, possibly the biggest bookstore in all of Japan, will be just down the road from our hotel so I don’t think I will be able to keep away. I also want to go to Gap because I want a Product(red) t-shirt. And those are our plans.

Yay! Blogger now supports graphics headers. What do you think of my new layout (photography by me)? I tell you, it was hard letting go of the green.

One bad thing about Japan

I had decided that today I would go all the way into Akita City to the only cinema in the area located near a train station to see both Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End and Spiderman 3. I went on the web page for that cinema and found that the schedule for the coming week is released on Saturdays, and so on a Friday the next days schedule is not visible. Which is inconvenient. Anyway, this morning I checked the schedule again and Pirates wasn't on it. I found the list of upcoming new releases and even though the list goes up to August, Pirates isn't there.

WHAT?!

ALVE is not showing Pirates? They're showing Spiderman, they will be showing Shrek, Zodiac and 300, but Pirates of the Caribbean isn't good enough for them? This sucks. I know that Pirates is being shown at Akita AEON Plaza but you need a car to get to AEON because it is stuck out in the middle of nowhere. The same with Mikawa AEON in Yamagata Prefecture. I'm starting to feel a little glad that I will be leaving the Japanese countryside and going back to the Wellington area soon.

Maybe I will have time next week to see Pirates in Tokyo. I hope so.

Towel Day

Sankyo Soko

The last stop was Sankyo Soko, the rice storehouses on the bank of the Mogami River. I've been there before. There is a big wisteria tree at Sankyo Soko and luckily the wisteria was blooming last week.

Gyokusenji

After visiting Ideha Museum, the Iwayas took me to Gyokusen temple. The temple was made in 1251 by Ryounen Houmyou Zenji (who was born in Korea). The temple garden was made in the Muromachi Period (about 1455) and was remodeled in the Edo Period in 1645.

Ideha Museum

The next stop on the sightseeing tour was the Ideha museum, a museum displaying artefacts and information about the Dewa Sanzan area. Some things I learned at the museum:

I cannot blow a conch shell horn.

There were and are many mountain priests in the area called Yamabushi who live extremely ascetic lives and carry conch shell horns around with them.

There was a rite of rebirth that used to be practiced in the area. I don't know why people would want to be reborn but when they did, they would be symbolically killed and then would do this weird ceremony and while they did the ceremony they were officially considered dead. The ceremony involved them wearing red ties to symbolize blood, a hat with white things stuck all over it to symbolize a placenta, and they would hold a huge staff about 4 metres high that symbolised an erect penis. Just in case the phallicness of the staff was not obvious enough, there was a bundle of sacred paper attached to the top that looked like a head and arrows pointing out the top that symbolised ejaculating semen. I'm guessing it was more of a Shinto rite than a Buddhist one.

At some stage there was an insect that decimated the crops in the area and caused famine. To this day every winter the local people make an 8m long model of the insect out of straw and burn it while yelling viciously just to make sure the insect never troubles them again.

They also make a model of a dragon's head out of straw to pray for rain, although the replica in the museum looked more like an oversized handbag to me.

Sumo may have originated in the Dewa Sanzan area as a post praying-under-waterfall strength comparing dance. Or maybe not.

Snakes liked to get into the walls of straw huts because straw is warm.

Mt. Haguro

On Sunday one of my newer English class students Mr. Iwaya and his wife took me sightseeing in the Shonai area. The Iwayas are a retired couple who are invovled in many volunteer activities and it seems that last week was their 'volunteer as tour guides' week. The Shonai plain is an area of Yamagata Prefecture just south of the border. The cities Sakata and Tsuruoka are located on the Shonai plain.

Unfortunately the weather on Sunday was cold and rainy which meant I had to do most of my sightseeing whie carrying an umbrella. Also my camera doesn't like dim weather. Many of the photos that I took came out blurry. Too bad. I did get a few good photos though.

Our first stop was Haguro-san, one of the 'Dewa Sanzan' (three mountains of Dewa). I will let you read the official English explanation:

By Cryptomeria trees they mean Japanese cedar. Anyway, I climbed up the 1.7 km, 2,446 step path to the top of Mt. Haguro. It was not an easy climb. I got a certificate commemorating my effort.

I think this bridge is awesome. I've only ever seen bridges like this before in Inuyasha cartoons.

This is Jijisugi (Grandpa Cedar). He is about 1,400 years old. There used to be a Babasugi (Grandma Cedar) but she got hit by lightning and burned down.

This is the five storey pagoda. Apparently it was originally made over 1,000 years ago and then got rebuilt about 700 years ago. There is not one single nail used in this pagoda; it is tied together with vines. There were a lot of people hanging around (as you can see) and I could not get a good picture.

These (priests?) were walking about and praying for peace at the front of each individual shrine within the shrine complex on the top of the hill.

The ghostly apparition in the background is the three god combined shrine.

Too Many Questions

Today was the elementary school sports day. Since the weather is still bad and I am still sick I did not go for long and while there I did not do much, just watched.

Some little four and five year old boys that I teach at the kindergarten found me and pelted me with questions.
"What are you doing here?" All the boys started shouting out (debatably) possible reasons for my presence, not giving me a chance to answer until one boy said "Because it's sports day?" and I said yes.
"Did you come here by plane?"
"No, I walked."
"Even though it's so far?"
I was just about to explain that I had not commuted all the way from New Zealand just to attend the sports day when: "Is your house near here?" another boy asked.
"Yes."
"You have really long hair."

Then the boys got into and started throwing about a box of balls that were going to be used for an event in the afternoon, and I told them off. They ran off a little way and for the next ten minutes decided they would play a 'yank on Catherine-sensei's hair while she isn't looking' game. I kept turning around in my seat and catching a little boy sneaking up behind me who would, as soon as I looked at him, squeal and run off to his friends giggling.

Eventually they stopped. I soon forgot about them and went back to watching the relay races. That was until I felt a yank on my hair. The littlest boy had more patience than his friends and had thereby won the game.

Cough cough

The weather is bad and I feel unwell. That's all I have to say about myself.

I am going to go on holiday again at the beginning of June. Sumiko and I will go to Tokyo to visit the Ghibli Museum. Yay! I'm really looking forward to it.

I ordered more books from Amazon.co.jp. I'm terrible, aren't I? I console myself with the knowledge that a book addiction is not more expensive than a partying/alcohol/tobacco addiction (which many people my age are afflicted with) and yet is much healthier.

Brief Movie Reviews

On Saturday I watched some DVDs and then went with Sumiko to Nikaho. We went to the 100 yen shop and the supermarket (oh, so interesting) and then we cooked Chinese food at Sumiko’s house.

Yesterday I finished watching the DVDs I rented last week. The Polar Express was really good. I wish they had Christmas movies that good when I was a child, rather than that old Santa movie that I was subjected to every year, which was always followed up by Back To The Future (which is such a Christmas movie). Unfortunately, the DVD was a bit broken and a couple of chapters did not play properly. How irritating.

The Producers was really good. How come I never watched it before?

Hellboy was crap, but I wasn’t expecting it to be good. I only rented it on a whim, because I have seen several other comic-related movies recently so I thought I would add one more to the list. I should be a bit more specific. There were some bits of Hellboy that were very, very good but then there were these other bits that were so bad that they cancelled out the good parts. I get the feeling that if I were familiar with the comic I would like the movie much more. What was missing was character dimension and if I already knew the characters then that wouldn't be an issue.

The last DVD I rented for the same reason I rented Hellboy. I was expecting it to be kind of crap too, but I got a pleasant surprise. I loved the Superman movies when I was a kid, but I thought by now I would have grown out of them. I mean, he wears his underpants on the outside for crying out loud. He looks like an idiot! But either I am going through a second childhood or Superman Returns is really good because I really quite enjoyed it. Really, despite the outfit and despite something occurring in the movie that I had hoped would never ever occur in the Superman franchise because it is just too gimmicky. All of the silliness seemed to have a gentle ‘tongue-in-cheek’-ness to it which meant that I didn’t feel pressured to accept it at face value. There were some solid serious themes dealt with that worked well: even Superman has to deal with the consequences of his actions, and even Superman can’t stop change. The huge gap since the last movie while other media worked with the characters means the live-action branch of the franchise has had a long time to mature well. Like a cheese. Yes. Just like a cheese. Apparently the new movie follows after the first movie and to a lesser extent the second one, not the third or the fourth which seem to have been dropped out of the timeline. I need to go back and watch number two at some stage because I can’t remember anything about what happened in it.

Wow, I feel kind of embarrassed admitting that I enjoyed watching a Superman movie. I ought to find the time to go see Spiderman 3, because then I’d be really cool.

Here is a cool link for you: Comix Worst To Best from RottenTomatoes.com. It's a list of all movies adapted from comics that have ever been reviewed at the site in order from worst to best. It's really interesting so go have a look.

Golden Week

This week is Golden Week, a week when many national holidays are grouped together to try and encourage Japanese workers to go on holiday and spend their money (a huge problem for the Japanese government - the Japanese reticence to go on holiday means that the government can't get as much GST off of them). Because every man and his dog goes on holiday in Golden Week causing tourist spots to get overcrowded and hotel prices to soar, I am not going anywhere. I went on the field trip on Monday that I have already talked about, and then on Tuesday and Wednesday I had work. Yesterday I went to Honjo to rent some DVDs and to do a spot of shopping. I bought some foods that I can't get in Konoura, such as three blocks of blue cheese and some stewing beef. Then I bought some notebooks, because I love blank notebooks. I love them even more when I get to use them. Cheap thrills. After that I went to Denkodo and impulse bought this:


Yes, I now own a lime green iPod Shuffle 2. It is so cool. I already own an MP3 player which I talked about here. I have had that MP3 player for two years now and although it has served me rather well, and although it is small for a 20GB player, I really wanted to get something that is smaller, so small that I wouldn't even notice it. Also, I have never used the playlist functions of my older player. Thirdly, I didn't want to have a player that is designed to be hung around the neck like so many other mini players, because stuff like that tends to bounce on the fabric of my clothes that is stretched over by bosom as if on a trampoline and hit me on the head. I'm not joking. I have hit myself on the head with a cellphone before simply by running a few steps. Altogether it seemed as if the miniature, no fussy playlists, clip-mounted iPod Shuffle was the choice for me.

I am also thrilled to discover that the sound quality of the iPod is very, very good. It is not the earphones, because I am using old earphones. The bass is especially good. I will still use my old player from time to time because the iPod Shuffle only carries 1GB and has no screen or way of selecting a certain song, but I think that for the most part my new iPod (which I have named Charlie after Charlie Nancy from Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman) will provide my day-to-day music needs.

The DVDs I rented yesterday were Superman Returns, Hellboy, The Producers, The Polar Express, Aeon Flux, Ultra Violet and The Brothers Grimm. I watched the last three last night. The Brothers Grimm was stupid. I don't think I will watch it again. Well, I might skip forward to the part where Heath Ledger 'kisses' Matt Damon and watch that part again, because that was interesting, but the rest of the movie wasn't. Aeon Flux and Ultra Violet are very similar movies. Not my usual fare, but I was in the mood for action movies yesterday so I quite enjoyed them. I have never seen the Aeon Flux animation so I don't know exactly how much the movie differs, but I heard that it is quite different and the original creator was quite upset with the way the live action movie turned out. Ultra Violet was a bit, um, non-sensical. Not to mention un-original. But I liked the colour-changing hair and clothing. I want my hair to turn purple on demand.

Misaki Park

On our way north back into Akita Prefecture we stopped at Misaki Park on the border between the two Prefectures. Misaki Park contains remnants of the old road between Sakata and Kisakata. It is very narrow, only a footpath and not at all suitable to horses or carts. Apparently it was the only road between the two towns. Since it dates to a time when all peasants were confined to their village and for the most part anyone who had the liberty to travel was either rich enough to afford sea passage or was a wandering monk and so naturally would have walked, no larger road would have been needed. If anyone knows about the poet Bassho, you might be interested to know that this is his 'Oku no Hosomichi.' Bassho walked this stretch of road north to see the 99 islands of the (now non-existent) Kisakata lagoon, and when he got there penned a very famous Haiku. I recently bought a book of Bassho's poems that I haven't yet read, so no doubt I will talk more on this subject at a later date.

Anyway, this was the last stop on the field trip, and a wonderful stop it was.

Here you can see a section of the path. It has been revamped since it was in general use to make it safe for hikers.

Here is a section of path in more or less original condition. As you can see, it was not made for horses.

Apparently this is the footprint of Tenaga Ashinaga, the long-armed long-legged demon that lived on Mt. Chokai terrorizing the local populace until the Three-Legged Crow betrayed him and he was killed by a warrior priest. I should have put a coin next to it to show you how big it is. This 'footprint' is about 10cm long. Even if he did have exceptionally long limbs, Tenaga Ashinaga can't have been all that big a demon. The word next to it says 'foot' and was put there by an unknown carver sometime within the last 30 years.

Eight-fold cherry

95% of the time, the macro zoom on my camera doesn't work (it's been broken since last summer) but every now and then it surprises me.

16 Buddhas

We drove down the other side of the Blue Line through the beech forests into Yamagata Prefecture and visited a place in Yuza town with 22 Buddhas carved into rocks on the sea shore. They are called the 16 Buddhas because 16 of them are of one Buddha, and the rest are of other Buddhas. I won't say any more because I took a photo of a sign, which you can read for yourself.