hanami and what not

I still haven't really done much about looking for a job yet. I need to get on that. Today I walked around this area, and these trees were blooming. People were doing hanami (flower viewing) and kids were playing, and petals were drifting slowly off the branches in the wind. Perfect setup for Spring to perform it's dance, eh?

travel in japan: part 2 (plus)

After saying goodbye to Tanya, I made my way up to hang out with Evan for another 2 days. He was working, and his hometown is very small, so I just walked around his local mall, had lunch with him during his lunch brake and then bar hopped with him after his work. The second day we all ended up at one of his freind's house, buzzed as a bee, drinking wine and talking about silly stuff in Japanese. The next day, I got up and went to Hiroshima, next day after that I went to Osaka, and finally went to Tokyo on an 11 hour local train. (The picture below is of the "atomic bomb dome" in Hiroshima, a sad relic of America's violent past.)
I'm going to now just randomly describe moments from my whole trip, random, from the start to the end. (A lot more happened, but if I chronologically listed it all, it would be way too long to write down here.)

Sitting in the airplane going from Hong Kong to Korea, theres a Korean couple next to me. With out asking he takes my used dishes and gives them to the flight attendent. His girlfriend offers me the uneaten bread from her meal. I smile, feeling the approach of Korea.

On a local train with Tanya, she tells a sick joke and I die with laughter, even though it shouldn't be funny. I can feel laughing-tears come to my eyes.

Another long local train, Tanya offers me a slice of bread and cheese. The train continues on endlessly.

Looking for an old lady's house-hotel near a local station with Tanya. Not finding it. The local police man takes us in his car to her door. The police man drives off. We nock. She doesnt answer. We go in. Shes sleeping. We don't know how to check in, so we leave and she wakes up, stumbling, mumbbling (in Japanese) that shes drunk. She loses her hat, walking in circles. Falling to sleep on soft futons in a large old tatami room.

Evan sits at his computer flipping randomly through Bellingham photos as he tells me stories about when I wasnt there. I feel the years, and connect to the missing moments in some way. Time seems translucent for a moment or two.

In Hiroshima, I meet a couple from Switzerland and two good friends from Columbia. Both females, of the four, have a hard time with English. We drink beer in the hostel, talking about their Japan experiences. I teach the Japanese word for "play" to the man from Switzeland. The Columbian man speaks Japanese well, he's in Japan on a Japanese government Japanese language study scholarship.

In Osaka, meeting a friend I hadn't met for 6 years. Something amazing about that much time between meeting someone. Somehow the past seemed to rush towards me, somehow the past seemed to be not so long ago.

And thats all the moments for now. A few more photos before I disapear.

This (below) is a shinto torii god gateway thing from my Kyushu trip.

Next picture below is Tanya taking my picture at Kumamoto Castle.

And now my day to day life in Japan, looking for a job or whatever, begins!

travel in japan: part 1

I flew out of Hong Kong, into Korea. In Korea, I got to Seoul really late at night so I crashed at my freind Sung Won's house. He had to work early, and I had to take the KTX to Busan so I left Seoul around 6 in the morning. I got to Busan, sat around in the sun, rode the Busan subway just for fun, and then took the night-boat to Fukouka. The boat was fun, a karaoke room, a video room, and a public bath. The room itself, was a small room with no beds, 12 matresses, and 12 people just sleeping elbow to elbow. Cheap ticket. And now for a breif review of the first part of my travel in Japan, with photos.
This is the shoreline in Hakata. I saw this early in the morning, as I arrived. As I looked out, I felt strongly "I'm back" and I thought that was funny since I've never really been to Hakata (have been to Fukouka last year though).

I came to the total country-side, and met Evan and hung out at some local bars and met crazy bartenders. Evan has a great blog entry all about the fun moments! Roughly summerized as: beer, food, big cave, curry.

I met Tanya, and we headed out on the circle trip around Kyushu. In this picture we stop at a VERY country-side station "soutaro" and saw that there wasnt even a platform, just gravel and a small box chair for the station. Wild. On to more Trip pictures...
Miyazaki had these great tree lined roads, with tiny Japanese style cars.
Sakurajima (in Kagoshima) was an active volcano sitting on an island. It was kind of scary to think that the mountain's hobby was upchucking lava bits.
This is the river (moat?) infront of the castle we went to at Kumamoto. We didn't have the time/money to go in, but it was nice to look from the outside.
I couldn't help but include some of the awesome sakura cherry blossoms at the castle. They were so soft and pretty, blowing down in a cascade of pedals.
Not much blog time right now, so to summerize... we went in a loop. From up near Evan down to Miyazaki, kagoshima, kumamoto and then back to Fukouka. Tanya was a great trvel buddy because she never killed me for all my silly conversations and stuff. It was a lot of fun to see parts of Japan I've never seen. I'm now back hanging out at Evan's house, part 2 of my trip should be coming soon! Woo!

12th vlog - swinging

This is the most personal, and abstract, video log I've created yet. It is me, in a swing, looking at my toes, in Hong Kong. The weather was great and I couldn't resist the ride. You can see an occasional, and shaky, view of the horizon as my swing sways back and forth...

11th vlog - rewind hong kong

When Kayo was here, we rode around town in an old tram. I took this video out of the back of the tram window. The green trams slide along train tracks, through the middle of crowded streets and under pedestrian bridges. (This event happened before the event I blogged about a few minutes ago.)

singing in the streets

I'm always in for an odd surprise when I hang out with Kayo's high school friend Takeya. He came to Hong Kong with a senior from his school, and his friend Miwa. Yesterday, me, him and Nagayama (his senior) went to wander around Temple Street district. Takeya was distracted several times looking for flesh magazines for his "friend" (his suspicious choice of words!) but eventually we got to Temple Street. It used to be famous for Triad gangsters and the area still holds some of that edge, trash blowing along dirty streets. Stalls selling nock-off items, tourist knickknacks, stone buddha or mao sculptures, and some sort of anti-STD cream with horrific pictures of before the "magic product" was used. Nagayama speaks fluent mainland Chinese, and found us a dirty table on the street, where we could consume large amounts of local beer from large bottles. As we drank, he pulled out his "travel guitar" and began to play. Nagayama can't see very well at all, but he can communicate in many languages. He started with some loud world war two patriotic songs, then went to an Israeli song he knew that has an awesome chorus, a few instrumentals, and then to a Japanese song that Takeya sang with him. He then went onto a Japanese song about lower male body parts, and finally a few Chinese revolutionary songs. By the time he got to the Chinese revolution song he was screeching loud, screaming as he plucked away at his shabby guitar. Some old taxi drivers next to us enjoyed it and invited us over to share their table and food. We talked, or atleast Takeya and Nagayama-san talked in mainland Chinese, and I mainly just listened. The booze continued to flow, until finally around 5 I stumbled into a Taxi with Takeya (who was staying at my house) and made my way haphazardly towards home. (Directory of three sound files of this event.)

10th vlog - buddha in hong kong

Kayo and her sister Mari came to visit me from Japan. We had a tourist blur trip around Hong Kong. In this video you can see us at a giant Buddha in front of a living Buddhist monastery. They can be seen as the video swooshes past them to see the big Buddha statue. The video then pans down to the monastery far below and ends with a soft glimpse of hills beyond.

9th vlog - neighborhood spin

Another silent video blog, this time I spin in a circle in my Hong Kong neighborhood. It's a lot to take in, while spinning quickly in a dizzy circle... it ends with an anticlimatic wobble, as if I'm unsure if I should stop the video or dash across the busy street.

nakayama nado

My friend Nakayama came to visit Hong Kong. It was so cool to see her here too (she had come to Korea while I was there too)... In this picture she's with her good friend (middle) and my new friend Eddie (far left)... The next day the three of us (me, her, her female friend) went to a club/bar downtown. We were playing a game where the looser had to get the attention of someone and make them come over and talk to us, and I lost so I got the attention of a few guys near our table and they came over and talked to us. One of the guys, leaned over and he told me "Wow, its so weird to hear you speaking English, all natural with an American accent, I thought you were one of THEM." (emphasis and weird word choice were his) I looked at him kind of weird because of his odd word choice and because I never thought of myself as looking Asian, which apparently he ment... So he said "well you were all yakiyakinakayaka" (imitating japanese I suppose) "so we thought you were asian." I'm still looking at him weird, so he adds "well like an albino asian guy or something." All I can say is: crazy drunk white people.

A few words about a few other movies you should see (from the millions of VCDs I've been seeing). I really enjoyed a contraversial Australian filmed called "Rabbit Proof Fence" A film that talks about, fairly directly, the racial problems of Austalian history. Its filmed wonderfully, acted beautifully, and paced with many slow lingering shots, which I enjoy. Another movie I saw was a super old (1993?) movie called "future cops"... This movie was horribly good. As in so horrible it was good! Lets let the back of the VCD speak for its self (direct quote) "In the year 2042, the notorious villain is about to be put on trial. His killers decide to go back 50 years by the time tunnel, and look for the judge in his youthful age. They want to program into the boy's mind and alternate his decision. However, the Future Cops follow. They infiltrate into a school and befriend with a slightly retarded boy, who is always insulted and bullied. Who knows he is in fact the judge in the future?" And it's a comedy. I think it's supposed to be one, if its an action film they failed. But its highly worth watching! If you like odd B movie things that is. Anyway, enough from me.

VCDs and shopping list

In my free time (when I'm not reading or walking around my neighborhood) I've been watching tons of VCD movies. It started because my friend loaned me an old laptop with a lot of movies, and then I noticed new ones at the local 24-hour VCD shop are very cheap, and soon I had watched a billion trillion movies. I was going to review them all here, but I forget, so I'll just mention a few I remember at the moment. (Randomly not in any order of significance or anything.) Escape From Hong Kong was an interesting movie, that ended a bit too much like an "after school morality special" or something. The review I link says it was filmed "cheaply" but I disagree, found the filming style refreshing for the most part. The script was just a bit boring after awhile, but very watchable. One of the favorite Japanese movies I saw was Nobody Knows which although not an unknown movie, I would guess its still less than major? None the less, wonderful filming, script, acting, the whole package. Nice movie, although with the fear of sounding snobby, the subtitles dont do the film justice and horribly translate some key phrases. Another Japanese movie I saw was Bounce Ko gals which although interesting view into the "paid dates" of some crazy high school girls, the movie sucks when it tries too hard to be a traditional movie, its best when it goes with the slurry camera work and the unscripted "blah blah" style conversations between costars, and the ending didn't hit me enough... although there are some good points about Japanese culture and world war 2 crimes in the script, interesting. Saw a few trippy Japanese low budget movies about escalators and strange animated plastic dolls, but regretfully forget titles at the moment. I also rewatched "2001: A Space Odyssey" Some people hate this movie, but I am a rabid fan. If you haven't seen it go out and rent it, uncut version. Any movie that starts out with a single held note with a blank black screen for about 1 minute is almost sure to be good. This movie is good because of its out dated classic 1960s future-tech, but also good for its philosophical elements, beautiful filming, awesome sound track and cool trippy psychedelic ending. So go watch it, or wait to watch it with me if you want a cheerleader for the movie! Anyway, I'll post more reviews later, this is getting too long.

In other events, I noticed yesterday I shop like an alcoholic 5 year old. My bag contained chips (crisps if you are one who enjoys British Englishi), cookies, chrysanthemum tea and rum. Yummy, the basic food groups. Anyway, time to wrap this up...

8th vlog - double decker buses

I find a kind of zen in my pointless boring vlogs. This one has no narration; it is simply a whole lot of double decker buses streaming past (also a tram is visible) ... near Fortress Hill station, in Hong Kong.

7th vlog - hong kong hills

This is more of a clip than a video blog. A few seconds of me looking out a bus window in the twilight, over the back hills of Hong Kong island.