I Love Sleep

This is my answer to a question I, amongst other people, was asked: What do you love?

I love the smell of rain on concrete, the smell of storms, and the smell of dettol. I love being inside when it is stormy out, warm drink in my hands and a blanket on my knees. I love wearing my skirts long, as well as my hair. I love reading. I love creating; pictures, stories, whatever. I love onions, cheese, and chocolate (but not together). I love tea; I drink it every day. I love going to the beach on cool stormy days more than on sunny days. I love snow and rain when they fall without a breeze. I love strong wind right before the rain arrives. I love plants even though I kill them. I love ginko trees and ferns, because they remind me of the distant past. I love Orion: he is the first constellation I search for when I look at the night sky. I love the first day in spring when it is warm enough to go to bed without socks on, and the first day in autumn when it is cool enough to go to bed with them. I love vegetables more than fruit. I love things that are decorated with leaves. I love money spiders, even though I like no other types of spiders. I love frogs more than humans usually do. I love mountains although I don't climb them. I love thinking, I love dreaming, I love sleep.

Kanmanji part 1

(I actually wanted this post and the one below it to be in the same post, but I had too many pictures and it didn't fit. Please keep reading down as if it were one post.)

Yesterday both Atsuko and I were bored, so we decided to do painting. First we had lunch in Kisakata. On the way back, as we were passing the turn off for Kanman Temple, Atsuko said "Do you want to see the temple?" I said I did, so we turned around and went back.

Here is a statue of Basho, a famous poet (artist?) who came to Kanmanji however many hundreds of years ago.
Before I show you the rest of the photos, I should tell you a little bit about the history of this area so you know what you are looking at. In the past, both Kisakata and Konoura were actually the sea. About 2500 years ago, a large eruption of Mt. Chokai blew a large hole in the side of the mountain. The rock that was blown off the mountain fell down in large island-sized boulders into the nearby ocean, creating the famous '99 islands of the north' (of which there were actually 103. They were named after the 'real' 99 islands, which are somewhere near Nagasaki I believe.) The density of these islands caused the water between them to be more like a lagoon than the open sea.

A long time ago, I heard 1200 years, the original Kanman Temple (Kanmanji) was built on the largest of the islands. The road to the front gate ran along a beach. Waves lapped at the feet of the graveyard. Since the island was made out of one giant rock, the ground was solid and dry enough for such things.

A couple of hundred years ago, a large earthquake raised this whole area up. The lagoon drained, creating the land that Konoura and Kisakata sit on today. But that left the islands stranded on dry land. You can still see them today. They still look very definitely like islands. Islands sitting amidst a sea of rice.

This stone bench at the side of the old road used to be on the shore. People could sit here and look out over the sea, and the 99 islands.

Here are a few islands. You can see that they are certainly islands and not hills.

Here is the old road up to the front gate. Now the road approaches from another angle. I am not to sure why there was an old road. I mean, who needed to use it when everyone approached the island from the other side by boat? I guess it's just traditional for a temple to have one of these.

Japanese people are so hospitable they even give clothes to their statues.
Continued below . . .

Kanmanji Part 2

This plant took my fancy. I asked Atsuko to pose with it so you can see just how big it is.

I like this picture.

This is a bell tower.

This post used to be what visiting boats were tied to, back when this was a beach.
This tree is 1000 years old.

I thought this building looked delightfully shabby. It looks haunted.

But a good angle makes the other half of the building look rather nice.

The 1000 year old tree from a distance.
Kanmanji is painted in an archaic colour scheme. The purpose of the red paint is to scare demons away.

This appears to be a family memorial. The jars on the side are urns for ashes.
I have known for a long time about the geological history of the area, but I have never seen it so clearly as I did yesterday. I could almost see the sea that had once been there.

After Kanmanji, Atsuko and I went back to Atsuko's house and did some painting. Then we decided to buy gyoza from Nikaho Max Valu for dinner. Just as we got to the car park, a call came from Toshi. He said he had just bought a shabu-shabu pot, so the three of us ended up eating dinner together. We had shabu-shabu and gyoza.

Autumn rice fields

Akita means 'autumn rice field.' Since I am living in Akita, I decided that it was very important of me to take photos of rice fields in autumn. So that is what I did on Saturday.

Not far into my walk, I ran accross this guy - Peter the Suicidal Mantis.

Peter was an old senile mantis, who was wandering around in the middle of the road oblivious to the danger. He was having trouble walking, and looked rather like he was boogie-woogying. I was concerned for his health, and after taking his picture I was standing there trying to decide whether I would intervene and usher him to the side of the road when I saw something out the corner of my eye. My head whipped around in time to see a snake snaking its way up out of the gutter a few metres away, it's eyes on me. We stared at each other for a few seconds before he (who I have decided to name Snape) retreated.

In short I didn't save Peter because I was too busy putting distance between Snape and myself.

Encounters with scary creatures could not dampen my resolve to take pictures of the fields. I quite like this picture - it's nice and orderly.


Taking this picture involve contorting myself into an awkward position, and stopping my breathing. And then waiting for the wind to quit being a pest.

The owners of this field dry their rice naturally. This the traditional rice-drying method used in this area. Further inland they use another method.

Three wise men.

I like this field. So far I have taken pictures of it in spring, summer and autumn, and said pictures are always picturesque (that statement is entirely redundant, isn't it?).

After taking a few more pictures on the way back home, I looked to the left and saw this: That time I did not jump, because in truth I was kind of expecting to encounter Snape again. He did not jump either, and I managed to take a few pictures (with zoom). But then a car went by and he did get spooked, so my snake-picture-taking was cut short.

I looked further up the road and saw a non-moving blob, and knew that the worst had happened. Peter the Suicidal Mantis had achieved his goal - he had been hit by a car. He was in a different part of the road to where I had seen him earlier, so he must have continued boogie-woogying up the road, you know, just to make sure he got hit.

As a tribute to the poor soul of Peter, here is a beautiful picture of some dead trees.

Now all I need to do is go for a walk amongst the fields in winter too, and my '4 seasons' collection will be complete.

Starsiren

Do you think I am getting better at digital art?


Starsiren by *togiren on deviantART

Autumnal Equinox

Saturday the 23rd was the autumnal equinox. There was a sports exchange that day, so I spent the morning at work. In the evening I went to a barbeque in Kisakata.

For a long time now Sean (the Nikaho ALT) and I have been asking Jon in Kisakata to organise a party, because Jon has a whole family-sized house to himself that is near the beach. He finally got around to it. Unfortunately Sean could not come because of a sad occurence, so at the party was Jon and friends of his I had never met before and myself with my friends Jon has never met before. The two groups did not mix. Maybe they would have mixed under better conditions.

With me were Atsuko, Toshi, Miwa and (later in the evening) Saya. We had a barbeque near the shore but not actually on the beach. Now, it is well past barbeque season. It was cold, and dark because the sun went down quickly and the closest streetlight was broken. No one thought to bring any lights. One of Jon's friends ran his car to light the party area with headlights. If anyone wanted food from the table they had to use the light on their cellphone to find what they were looking for. The stars were pretty though.

This of course is the reason why the party stayed split into two groups: one set of people were huddled around the 'barbeque' (coals glowing in half a section of cement pipe) and the other half was huddled around Atsuko's portable gas burner that we cooked stew and Yakisoba on.

I guess we were just unprepared. It seems as if Jon forgot to tell his friends to bring stuff: some people brought some meat, but as for non-meat food, they were all eating the foods that Astuko and I brought with us (I took a lot). We couldn't eat Toshi's fruit because we didn't have a decent place to cut it. We all thought Jon would have paper bowls and stuff, but he didn't. We had to go to Max Valu to buy some.

I don't know what was with Jon. He wouldn't let us use his house, he wasn't prepared, and he cut the party short by going off by himself and crying. I don't know why. I kind of feel sorry for him, that he was sad, but I don't know why he was. The rest of us had a good time despite being cold and unable to see. Come to think of it, maybe that is why he was sad. Maybe he felt left out?

Anyway, after the party died, Miwa went home because she had an early start on Sunday, but Saya, Toshi and I went to Atsuko's house. We stayed there until 4am drinking red wine and soba (buckwheat) tea. About two or three o'clock in the morning Saya's friend came to pick her up, but he ended up drinking soba tea with us. Then he (whose name I cannot remember) gave Toshi and I a ride home as well as Saya. I live near Atsuko and Toshi lives near Saya, so it wasn't so far out of the way.

I had Monday off because I worked on Saturday, so I spent two lazy days doing nothing. At dance practice on Tuesday I finally received a DVD of my trip to Sapporo, complete with the actual footage of our team on the Yosakoi Matsuri TV coverage. We were on TV for about three minutes. I was at the back so there were no closeups of me, thankfully. If I figure out how to convert footage ripped off a DVD into a web-friendly format, I will see about YouTube-ing it and sharing it here. I also received photos of the trip last week. I really ought to see about scanning them up.

As yet I have no plans for the coming weekend, so I don't know if I will have anything to write about next week. Maybe I will go shopping.

Too much beef

Last Friday I went to eat yakiniku (grilled beef) with my friends. On Saturday I didn't go anywhere but instead stayed home watching Noh theatre on TV while crocheting, just as if I were in my seventies. But I had fun, which come to think of it is probably the most disturbing thing. That evening I made from scratch a steak and cheese pie, because I really do crave those from time to time. At nine I watched the last episode of 'My Boss, My Hero,' a TV program I have been watching recently. It is a school / yakuza comedy drama, which sounds like it wouldn't work but does. I am sad that it is over. Maybe I will buy the DVDs when they come out. Afterall, I didn't see all the episodes, and they may come in handy for studying Japanese some time in the future *innocent look*.

On Sunday I went with Sumiko and Atsuko to Akita AEON Plaza. I bought a new pair of jeans because my old ones have about 10% the pigmentation they used to, and a new pair of trousers for work. I also bought muesli, Twinings tea and cheese. And what wonderful cheese it is: feta from Greece, Edam from Holland and blue cheese from Denmark.

On Monday I went with Atsuko to a concert in Kisakata that I had received a ticket for. The person playing was Karen Nunis Blackstone, who lives here in Akita because her husband is a professor at Akita International University. She is from Malaysia, and apparently is fairly successful in her home country. She is a singer/songwriter who sings the blues and other jazz related stuff, although there really are a lot of influences in her work. Playing with her were two professional musicians from Malaysia, a base guitar player and a percussionist who played rare folk instruments. There was also a guy who might have been a professor playing the electric violin and the banjo, and Professor Blackstone on the harmonica. Billie Nunis Blackstone (11, daughter of Karen) entertained the audience from time to time with cute spontaneous dances of the type only children can do. The concert was spoilt for me slightly by Atsuko laughing hysterically at a song about Namahage.

After the concert finished, everyone was invited to stay and talk with Karen over snacks and drinks. Most people left. Atsuko and I were going to as well, but first Billie stole Atsuko's cellphone, and then right after the confusion ended the base player Adrian came and personally invited me to stay. I talked with all three of the Malaysians. They are all very nice people.

After I had finished socialising, and Atsuko had finished fighting with Billie, we went to meet Toshi and eat Shabu-shabu. It was my first time to eat it. Shabu-shabu is food that you cook yourself by holding it with your chopsticks, swirling it in boiling water, dipping it in sauce and then eating it. Foods available were leeks, tofu, mushrooms, cabbage and lots and lots of beef. It was delicious, but very expensive for food that the cook only had to chuck on a plate raw and give to us to deal with.

On Tuesday I watched the last episode of 'Kekkon Dekinai Otoko,' a TV program I have been watching lately (TV programs here run quarterly on fixed seasons, so everything finishes about the same time, and soon). The name of the program means 'the man who cannot get married,' and is about a man who cannot get married. A very strange man. Very strange, although in truth I have known stranger.

So in summary, my last week has consisted primarily of music, TV, shopping and beef.

Pictures part 5

Pictures part 4

On the day I went to take pictures of the fields, I met a very photogenic dragonfly who was willing to pose for me.

Pictures part 3

Last week I went to take pictures of the rice fields before the harvest is brought in.


There were a lot more photos like this.

On the way back I heard a railway crossing, so decided to take a picture of the coming train. It turned out that the train was a long-distance express train, one step down from a Shinkansen, so it was going pretty fast. I am amased I managed to catch the front of the train in the picture at all.

A minute later, a freight train passed going in the opposite direction. It was going slower, so I was able to get a better picture. That blue thing above the train in the right side of the picture is not part of the train, but a community centre in the distance.

Pictures part 2

There is a path that leads from my street to the area where the Elementary school and Sumiko's house is. This summer the path, along with most of Konoura, has been invaded with fast-growing vines.
These vines were not here last year or the year before, I am sure. It was actually quite scary walking up this path.

Luckily for me, the council cleared the path up last week.

I had seriously forgotten how broad it is.

But what is with these vines?! They are everywhere, choking out all other plants, covering up paths. It's like living in a b-grade sci-fi horror movie.

Pictures part 1

One day the other week in the middle of the hottest part of summer, I returned home from work to find that one of my healthiest plants had lost about a third of it's leaves since that morning. Over the next few hours, it lost over half of the remaining leaves. Look at all the leaves lying (positioned by me) around the poor plant. Please notice how green and healthy-looking the fallen leaves were.



Above you can see the stem and all the places where the leaves fell off from.

Half an hour after I took these pictures, another stem of leaves fell off. No more have fallen since then. The plant has three large stems of leaves and one small stunty one with two tiny leaves, and that is all. I put the plant closer to the window because I thought it would need more sunlight if the remaining leaves were to pick up the slack from the fallen ones. I am happy to say that yesterday I noticed that the plant has started to grow new leaves. Yay! They are still too tiny to take pictures of, so I will take a picture later when they are bigger.

And here is a picture of some fireworks in Honjo last month.