Strain the brain

So what have I been doing during the time that I was too lazy to blog? I have been to Atsuko's house a couple of times. Once we had dinner and Atsuko's friend Chinatsu from China made us proper Chinese gyoza. Very, very good. I got to help fold them up.

I watched the entire first series of the new Doctor Who and then my old computer died so I can't watch the next series. I am now using the internet on my little subnote computer, but I can't leave it at home for a week downloading a TV series because this is the computer that I take with me to work. Well, now at least the descision whether to take my old Compaq back with me to NZ or not has been made for me.

On the 16th I became a doll. Until April a woman called Mitsu-sensei was working at the elementary school. For months she had been telling me that she would give me a kimono before I left Japan, and the other month she got in contact with me and said that she would have me dressed up in said kimono and get my picture taken profesionally, as a present. That happened on the 16th. Mitsu-sensei picked me up at 9am and took me to a beauty parlour in Nikaho. The owner of the beauty parlour, a lady who goes by the name of Elle, had volunteered to dress me up in the kimono for free. She did my hair too, and seemed to have fun doing so. "I've never seen hair like this before. . . ."

After I was all dressed up, Mitsu-sensei's husband came and drove us to a photography studio in town and I had my picture taken. Then we briefly went to Mitsu-sensei's parents house so I could be placed in front of a traditional Japanese alcove and in a traditional garden and have my picture taken again. Then we went back to the beauty parlour and the kimono and the hair style came off. Elle gave me a free hair cut because she said my hair was just too ratty and she couldn't in good conscience leave it like that.

I bought a pink Nintendo DS Lite. I had a very good reason to! You see, I also bought a piece of software for it that is not a game but a kanji study tool that makes excellent use of the touch-sensitive screen. So I can practice reading and also writing kanji on the DS Lite. Wonderful! Maybe now I'll study kanji on a regular basis. Maybe my DS Lite will help me pass the Japanese Proficiency Test.

Last Friday I had plans to go hiking in Nakajimadai, some type of park or nature reserve near here, with my Eikaiwa class students. Unfortunately the hike was cancelled due to rain. That evening some books and a CD arrived for me from Amazon. I got Tori Amos' new album American Doll Posse, two manga (the last two volumes of Fruits Basket) and a few more graphic novels written by Neil Gaiman. I just can't stop reading that guy's stories! I bought Black Orchid, The Books of Magic and Midnight Days. What am I going to do when I have run out of stuff by Neil Gaiman to read? Come to think of it, I'll probably start reading Hellblazer. The Books of Magic made me feel like reading more about John Constantine.

Last Saturday and Sunday there was an inter-school sports exchange event. On Saturday I went to Chokai to cheer for the baseball team. It was sunny and hot (very different to the previous day) and I got very sunburnt despite the fact I put SPF 30+ sunscreen on twice. It was a close game with many no-run innings. (Are they even called innings in baseball? Or runs?) There was excitement of the bad kind when two of our fielders collided trying to catch a ball (they dropped the ball but managed to stay on the field. Unfortunately the boy who got hurt worst was our best batter). Two minutes or so later, the other team had much worse luck when the pitcher and the catcher managed to run headlong into each other while trying to catch the ball. The catcher was fine (he had a mask etc. on after all) but the pitcher knocked himself quite badly on the catcher's mask and had to be taken away by ambulance! Oh, the drama. Even minus their main pitcher the other team managed to win.

On Sunday I went to cheer the soccer team. The soccer tournament was held at the TDK sports facilities in Konoura, so not far away. The team played two games. They won the morning game against Kisakata quite easily (is 3:1 easily? I'm guessing so) but they lost the afternoon game. The afternoon game was against one of the best teams in the area, so that's OK. I can't say much about how the games were played because a) there was no grandstand like at the baseball so I couldn't really see what was going on and b) even when I can see well, all soccer looks like to me is a bunch of people running around randomly on a field. Yawn.

At lunch time I went with the free teachers and students to Kujira Park (across the road from the Shirase Memorial Museum) and got to see all the baseball, judo and art club boys playing excitedly on the jungle gym like five-year-olds. Well, not all. The boy so anti-social he hardly ever comes to school sat out to one side and the Head Boy, who seems to be the only mature boy in the whole school (hence the fact he was made Head Boy), decided instead to sit in the shade with the teachers and join in the "Look at them! They're like monkeys" conversation.

I got sunburnt that day too. I was in a fair amount of pain on Monday. I had been planning on going somewhere either on Monday or Tuesday because I had those days off in lieu, but the weather was sunny and hot again and I was afraid of getting even more burnt so I stayed home. That is of course with the exception of Monday morning when I went to the kindergarten to teach English for half an hour. Just half an hour.

On Wednesday Mitsu-sensei came to the elementary school to give me the kimono and the photos from the 16th. I should scan the photos up sometime. I have some of the non-professional photos on my computer already. I'll see about posting them. Maybe. My scanner has not been working very well lately and the scans are very bad quality.

Today I had plans to go on the hike around Nakajimadai that had been postponed last week, but it rained again! I don't know if I will have another chance to go, which is too bad because I had been looking forward to seeing Chokai morimo (a type of moss. That's right, you heard me. I'm sad because the rain is keeping me from going to see moss).

Speaking of moss, I just remembered something. I once read an essay written by an ex-ALT who said that the Japanese also have the saying "A rolling stone gathers no moss" but in Japanese the meaning of the phrase is opposite to the English phrase in that the Japanese want the moss i.e. the Japanese version of the phrase means don't move. I thought that was really cool, and was thinking of it as an example a main difference between Eastern and Western thought. The other (week? month?) I asked my Eikaiwa class about that saying. They confirmed that it exists in Japanese. But then they disappointed me greatly by saying that the ex-ALT had been wrong. The phrase means exactly the same in Japanese as in English: moss bad, moving good. So very, very disappointing. But I guess what this story now illustrates is that Eastern, Western, whatever we may be, we are not so different after all.

Pictures From Tokyo

Wow, I have been so slack recently. I went to Tokyo weeks ago. Why am I only uploading the pictures now? Inexcusable.

First here are some pictures from the Edo Museum:

This is the Rakugo stage

This is a tiny model of a palace that doesn't exist anymore.

This is me in a replica of a nobleman's palanquin

Lots of little Edo people. Aren't they cute?

This is a full-scale model of an Edo period workshop in a nagaya (Japanese style terrace building)

This is a full-scale model of a family in a one-room home in a nagaya building. The wife has just given birth and the grandmother is washing the newborn infant in the traditional way.

A full-scale model of a Kabuki actor

Another Kabuki mannequin. By the way like Elizabethan actors, all Kabuki actors were men.

Yet another Kabuki mannequin. This guy is so cool. He was very imposing in real life (not that he's alive - you know what I mean).

Now for some pictures of the Ghibli Museum:

You recognise this guy Gillian? This is the robot thingie from Laputa. You can find him on the roof of the museum.

This is also from Laputa. It seems that when the castle broke up, one of the blocks landed on the roof of the museum.

The museum entrance

The side of the museum. Isn't it wonderful? All museums should look like this.

Museum sign/lamp post. I love lamp posts. I think it's a Narnia thing.

It's Totoro! Really! He is life-sized and everything.

And now for some random photos:

The view from my hotel room; the less garish side of Shinjuku.

A Noh mask in the National Museum. This is the only photo I took there. I should have taken more because I was allowed to, but for some reason I just couldn't quite believe my eyes when I saw all the 'Photography OK' signs. I mean, how many museums in the world that display priceless relics of passed ages allow photography? Not many, that's for sure.

The back side of the shops that line the road leading up to that big temple in Asakusa which I keep forgetting the name of.

A view across the river from the Asakusa ferry terminal. Apparently this is the headquarters of a beer company, although it seems as if the building is known to most people as 'unko biru' (the poo building). That's Japanese humour for you. Incidentally, the New Tokyo Tower is going to be built near here.

This is Venus Fort in Odaiba, the ultimate in female shopping experience (or so they say). The ceiling actually changes colour from day to sunset and back again. Umm, yeah.

This isn't the best photo in the world but I thought I would include it because that hazy curve of land you can just see is Nikaho City. My house is down there!

Mount Chokai among the clouds.

A zoomed picture of Chokai. Notice all the snow, and remember that this photo was taken in June.

Tokyo

Okay, so I went to Tokyo and I came back and that was several weeks ago. Umm. I didn’t blog earlier because I was too busy watching Dr. Who, and then my computer died and I had to hook my little computer up to the internet and then I was busy. And lazy. Yeah. Well, anyway, I'm back.

Sumiko picked me up from my house at 5.40am the other Saturday ( the 2nd) and then we drove to the airport. The most direct road from here to the airport is an old, rarely used road from before the highway was made. It is very scenic, winding through the hills and following a part of the Omono river. The wild wisteria was blooming and so were some pink flowers which we couldn’t decide on the identity of. We had a nice decent flight and got to Haneda airport in Tokyo at about 8.30am. The weather was hot and sunny, like it was throughout our whole trip (the weather forecast had originally been for clouds and rain, so we were very lucky). We took the monorail into Tokyo and switched to the JR Yamanote line. We stopped to have breakfast in a café in Akihabara station before getting on another JR train and going to Asakusabashi. I wanted to go to Asakusabashi because there are a lot of bead shops there that sell very cheap stone beads. I bought my beads and then we travelled one stop down the line to Ryogoku to visit the Edo Tokyo Museum. It is a very good museum with many models of various sizes of things that could be found in Tokyo when it was called Edo before the Meiji Restoration at the beginning of the modern period. I won’t bore you with a list of the things I saw and learned, suffice it to say that I saw a lot, learned a lot and took many dark blurry pictures (photography is OK in that museum because everything is only reconstructions). I also got to see a Rakugo performance that was held at a stage inside the museum. Rakugo is a type of Japanese comedic act where someone sits on a cushion and tells amusing stories. It was the first time I had ever seen Rakugo so I don’t know if the performance I saw was a typical example. The guy spoke really fast, like a horse race commentator, and I was surprised to find that I could keep up with a lot of it.

We then caught the train out to Mitaka, and met Sumiko’s little sister who lives in Tokyo at the Ghibli bus stop. We went to the Ghibli museum together. Yay! We saw the short film ‘Mei to Konekobus’ (Mei and the Kittenbus) which is a continuation of the movie ‘Tonari no Totoro’ (My Neighbour Totoro). It was so cute! There were all sorts of Nekobusses and even a Nekotrain and a Nekospaceship. We ate lunch in the café located inside the museum, and then we went exploring. There are all sorts of things to be discovered in the museum; storyboards and cels, optical illusion models, random spiral staircases and picture galleries. No photography is allowed inside the building, but it is allowed in the roof garden.

I don’t want to say too much about what can be found inside the museum, because that is not the type of museum it is. It is a place of mystery and discovery. Either going and looking for yourself or, if you can’t go, wondering about what is in there is the best way to treat it.

We went to Shinjuku and checked into our hotel. The Washington hotel is a funny curvy shape and our rooms were tucked into this sine curve like part. Sumiko’s room was on the outer part of the curve and mine was on the inner, so my room was considerably smaller than hers even though we paid the same price. Whatever. My room was cute, and that’s more important than size. I am so turning Japanese, to be thinking like that.

The three of us went out to dinner at Chanko Dining Waka, a famous restaurant that sells the Sumo food I was talking about. It was delicious. There was nabe (stew) and a variety of other little dishes such as chicken wings and avocado and salmon on crackers. Very, very good, and so it should be, a famous restaurant in Shinjuku.

On Sunday Sumiko wasn’t busy after all so we went to the National Museum in Ueno together. We took one look at the queue to see the special Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition that is on now, and decided not to go. First we went into the Asian building and looked at many artefacts from Persia, China, Egypt, Iran and Korea. It was very interesting. At one stage I was looking at a pottery vessel from Egypt and I thought it said ‘7^th century BC’ but then I realised it said ‘7^th Millennium BC’ and I was blown away. It was much better made than I thought something of that time period would be. At about 1 o’clock we had lunch at a restaurant within the museum grounds. I had roast chicken with mushroom gravy. We then went into the main building. We didn’t have time to look at everything so we only went to see a few exhibits that we particularly wanted to see. We looked at the Beginning of Japanese Art, an exhibit that seemed to concentrate on Buddhist art; artefacts from Okinawa, Ukiyou-e prints, kimono, and Noh play robes and masks.

We then caught the subway to Asakusa. We were planning on riding the Himiko ferry but while we were in the queue waiting to get tickets, the tickets sold out. So sad. We met Sumiko’s sister again and had a look around Asakusa for a while. Then we caught a normal ferry to Hinode port and then rode the Yurikamome train over the Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba. We did a spot of shopping in Venus Fort (I bought some stuff at lush) and then we headed back to Shinjuku. We ate proper Korean Yakiniku where the meat gets wrapped in salad leaves with garlic before being eaten (so delicious) and then that was that for the day.

On Monday morning we checked out of the hotel and went to Hamamatsucho station (the station from which the monorail to Haneda airport leaves) and put our bags in coin lockers. Then we went our separate ways. Sumiko went to Kappabashi, a place that sells kitchenware. I went to Shibuya to visit the Apple Store. A very helpful Apple specialist answered all the questions I had. It was such a pleasure to get information from the source. I find that people who work in general electric stores or computer shops selling lots of different types of computers never know what they are talking about; they’re only sales people after all. But the specialist guy knew what he was talking about, and I heard everything I wanted to hear. I should also mention that I asked all the questions and heard all the answers in Japanese. The guy asked me if I preferred to speak in English or Japanese, I said both were OK, and he chose to use his native language. I had no problem, but maybe that is not all that big of an achievement since most computer terminology in Japanese is derived from English.

After going to the Apple Store I sort of stumbled into the Disney Store. Don’t quite know how that happened. I am now the proud owner of a Captain Jack Sparrow B5 notebook and a Little Mermaid plastic slip file. I still had quite a lot of time after I had finished in Shibuya so I hopped on the train to Harajuku and mooched around there, because there is nothing like mooching around in Harajuku to convince you that you are actually in Tokyo.

I went back to Hamamatsucho and met Sumiko and then we went to catch our airplane at Haneda. The wisteria and the other flowers were still blooming. We got back to Konoura at 7pm.