kyoto in spring

This is a blog about going to Kyoto last week. Irrelevant or useless details have been redacted in the sake of brevity and laziness.

So I was supposed to go to Taiwan with my friend Yusuke, but his computer fell down in the earthquake so he didn't want to spend any money on travel because everyone knows a computer is an important window to the world. I understand, but was quite discouraged. Tokyo is shaking like a tamboruine, and I really wanted to get out of town for a few days. A friend suggested we go on a vacation in Japan for a few days and I immediately thought of Amanohashidate, one of the "three scenic places of Japan" somewhere I have been wanting to go for quite awhile.

To save money, we took a pass that can be loosely translated as the "JR Youth 18 Pass". If you are unfamiliar with this pass, let me explain that you don't have to be young to use it. It is simply only valid during school breaks, thus the name. It is quite cheap, but you can only take local trains. My travel companion is a quite relaxed lady, and so she mostly just looked out the window at the slowly rolling countryside. We left Tokyo station at about 8AM and got into Kyoto station around 5:20PM that evening. It was quite a ride. Right in front of Kyoto station is the aptly named Kyoto Tower, so we rode up the tower for a twilight view of our new surroundings.


Kyoto is a peaceful city, and a whole lot darker than Tokyo. Not a lot of neonlights, and a considerable less amount of light pollution. (Suppose if I had grown up there, my blog would have had a different name besides Neonvirus, eh?) In fact, we could make out pinpoints of major stars as we walked around the city for a bit (lost, utterly lost, never found our destination).

The next day, we did the tourist thing. We went and visited The Golden Pavilion, which is like the Eiffel Tower of Kyoto. Symbolic but as cheesy as you imagine. After walking around the gaudy temple and the beautiful Japanese strolling garden, we made our way to a local temple that was aflame with Cherry Blossoms. Wonderful tiny pinkish white blossoms against a stark blue sky. Cherry blossoms are a seasonal reminder of the always rolling wheel of time, I enjoy the evanescence of their beauty. It's good to remember that even beautiful things don't last forever, and yet nothing is ever lost forever in the cycle of life. Or something. Yeah, odd thoughts.


The next day, we made our way to my desired destination. Amanohashidate. That name is quite a mouth-full, eh? Amanohashidate is a land "bridge" that cuts across a bay, and it has been around for quite sometime. It was quite hard to get to it (took a 3 hour bus that cost about US$40) but it was quite beautiful and the weather was perfect.


Oddly, the preferred viewing of Amanohashidate is with your head between your legs. I am not joking. People get up to the edge of the hill above it, and tuck their head between their legs and look at the land bridge from between their legs. Oddest tradition I have heard in awhile.


We walked along the land bridge itself too. It was quiet and peaceful, not so many people. On the edges of the land bridge were soft empty beaches with emerald green water. The trees and the ocean were quite refreshing, a focal point of natural energy, so to speak.

And before I knew it, the next day was hitting me over the head with it's long train ride back to the constantly shaking Tokyo. Good memories last a lifetime, at least that's the hope. I sometimes wonder how long I can hold memories in my mind before they fade away like most things in life.

(This goes without saying, but click on the images for larger views.)

the wait

A little like knowing a holiday is coming, but not knowing when, they have promised a magnitude 7 earthquake sometime this week in Tokyo. Combined with the waves of planned power outages, the continued aftershocks, and the almost collapse of the train system, and it is a bit of a mess in Town these days.

So I was told work was open. So I woke up as usual, headed to the office out in the countryside. The first sign of foreboding, was when my normal line wasn't running. I switched to a different line, and got to my transfer point. And then when I usually only wait 5 minutes for my next train, I waited for over an hour for a train towards work. But that train didn't even make it that far. Because of aftershocks or overloading or whatever reason, they stopped the train shortly before the correct station and unloaded us all. We were funneled out of the station. I was so close, but not there. I asked the local subway if they could get me near my work, and they suggested a stop. I waited again for a subway, and then used the GPS on my cellphone to find work, which was about a 10 minute walk away from the subway I rode on. I got to work and... no one was there. No students, and only one head staff. Empty. The others hadn't made it. I sat there for awhile wondering why I was there. A local unemployed student came by for a lesson, and it was surreal. Just the two of us pretending that I was working in a fully functioning machine.

After the student went home, the head staff got permission from his boss to close the school. I went back to the main station. But it was shuttered. Completely closed, with signs on it. I felt so weird. Exit blocked. I walked to another train line. Closed. This was like Escape From New York, or something. I walked with the head staff even further, and we found a running subway (bless the subways!) and I got back to somewhere that I had a running train to Tokyo.


The trains were PACKED, and it was surly not rush hour. It was so bad, that they actually had to have staff tie ropes to hold back people so they didnt clog the up and down flow on the stairs. The trains themselves were elbow to elbow, grumpy tired people.

Most of the food has been picked off the shelves of the local supermarkets, like we were visited by locus. Oddly things like instant noodles seem the first to go, but if an earthquake comes again I don't think we will be able to cook noodles. I didn't have a lot of supplies in my house before the earthquake, so I don't have a lot of food to make. I am eating up my emergency canned food, it was supposed to be for if a massive earthquake hit. But a hungry stomach tells me I can get new cans tomorrow. I have water filled up in my bathtub, just in case water goes out. A candle ready, for a power outage. I just don't want to experience that earthquake that they say is coming. Not really a fun thing to look forward to.

thus spoke the earth

It started out as a fairly usual day, as the majority of days do. I woke up, showered, grabbed a bite to eat and rushed out the door to work. At work I exchanged the same typical banter with my coworkers and went to class. In my class there was a grumpy student, and I remember thinking about how I could try to change that. When suddenly the earth started to roll, like the deck of a boat. I have been in a lot of earthquakes in Japan, but this one felt different. I stood up, and said maybe we should do something. Some of the students looked scared. A very pessimistic coworker across the way laughed and said "It's only an earthquake." But the rolling continued, the walls began to undulate, and the pessimistic coworker kind of nodded and said maybe "Yeah, maybe we should get out." So we stood the students up and with the help of the staff up at the front desk, we evacuated with the neighborhood to a small park near the buildings.

There we were huddled in the park, shaking, most of us without coats. The fitness gym people only in towels, a small group of nurses behind them, and a group of apparent hostesses from a club behind them, a quite random group of strangers standing around in the park nervous. We didn't know if we could go back into the building, and there were already several strong aftershocks. Some of my students from the class I had been teaching had their books with them, so I sat on the steps of the park and taught half of the lesson in the open air. We decided to go back to the school, and tried to teach more but the aftershocks scared everyone. And the news of the tsunami wave warnings and what not began to filter in. The students found ways to get home to check on loved ones but the teachers and staff hung around the branch not sure if they could go. Some of the teachers decided to just go, since there was no point in staying in an empty school. But at that point we found out that the trains had been stopped all over Japan. One of my coworkers had TV in her electronic dictionary (what an age we live in!), and we started to see the destruction. A walk home would have taken me 6 hours or so, it wasn't an option. We got word that the company would pay for a taxi ride if we took one, so I went out and tried to find a taxi. The line for a taxi was hideously long, wrapped fully around the building and only slowly moving. The night was bitter cold. I decided to make my way back to my school where it was warm at least. I stretched out some chairs and tried to sleep. A few other coworkers did the same. In the morning, I got up early and tried to take the first moving train. I waited on the platform with a clog of other people, the golden rays of the sun seeming to offer symbolic hope.

The group of people (in the above picture the sun highlights the man's newspaper, and a headline that reads "What will happen to the water and electricity?") waited silently for quite awhile until a local train inched slowly into the station and dragged us in our direction at a snail's pace. I thought the platform at my first station was crowded, but when I got into downtown Tokyo it was mayhem. There was wall to wall people trying to get on trains. It was like a fireworks festival or new years in times square, but without the laughter, smiles and happiness. I got home finally, at about 10:30AM... a few hours short of 24 hours after the earthquake.

As I am sure you know from the news, this was an insane 8.9 magnitude earthquake that resulted in tsunamis and sadly loss of life. I suppose it should be said here that many of the buildings in Japan are designed so well to withstand earthquakes that this greatly helped to reduce casualties. The biggest destruction seemed to be from the aftermath; tsunami and fire. It is quite surreal watching such wild destruction live in places only hours from you, and I suppose my little experience of it was nothing compared to what others felt firsthand. (The above collection of pictures are from net streamed TV coverage I was watching live.) There have been many aftershocks, just had two while writing this. I am nervous but still very much alive. Life is a fragile thing.

The me inside the me inside the mirror

This morning I stumbled onto the above picture on the Internet (I am on the train to work right now) and it got me thinking about life. I was thinking about how I am the same "me" I have always been, and yet externally I am quickly changing. Some gray hair, more wrinkles and a disappearing chin these days. This long strange trip of life is quite odd. I wonder too much about meaning, I wonder if I will ever stop wondering about meaning. Life has it's patterns, expected performance. I have things I have wanted to do and yet have never done. I have things I have done, and I have a collection of memories contrasted with my thoughts that make me who I am. Dust to dust, memento mori.  

a new year dawns

I seem to be a bit delinquent with the whole blog thing, so I am sitting down here to write something. The old and odd Stuck With You, by Huey Lewis & The News just popped onto my computer, which is set on loud to drown out the pounding sound of the workmen ripping the surface off the small alley behind my house. They are just going to repave it after they pull it up. Noisy thundering and machines blocking me in to my house. I am suppose to get out of here soon, so I hope they clear a way so I can get out of my house.

And now Basket Case by Green Day is on the computer (my collection is rather eclectic and random) and my mind is pulling me into a Geocities chat room from a million years ago, a long time before I ever heard this band live, chatting with someone who mentioned Green Day. I had no idea they were talking about a band. Naive innocence of youth, lost?

This experimental "mind flow" blogging is failing.

Now the computer presents me Love Love Show by The Yellow Monkey. A good song, also with it's connected moments and memories. Music is like that, a kind of mental bookmark.

I need to get ready to go out.

Hello 2011, I hope we can believe in the brightness of the dawn.

sad dream of the future

This morning I had a tainted movie-dream. (It was a dream that was more like a movie for me, no active participation from me. I knew on one level it was a dream, but I just saw it like a movie. This is a common dream type for me.)

In the future, medical advances and social opiating megacorporations have reduced poverty and starvation to only a small percentage of the world. The greatest percentage of the world's population live in a media haze, their basic lives sustained by their networked jobs. Games, information, violence, and lust: piped into their field of view most of their waking lives. Somehow the mass of humanity decides that poverty is a way of life, a valued aspect of human nature. It is argued that eradicating the final slums would destroy the heritage and culture of generations of slumdwellers. The slums are relocated to socially convient places and the media fixates on the pain and suffering of the slum people. 24 hour cameras are installed on the caged in ghettos walls, the last remnents of days gone by. Starvation and manufactured drugs become the rabid entertainment of a painfully dull global society, sunk deep in their media feeds.

It was a pretty vivid dream.

sonic entertainment

A Canadian coworker has a band and he invited me and a bunch of other coworkers to come see him perform live. In Japan, most bands perform at a "live house" instead of a bar or club. These "live houses" are specifically designed for the concept of performances by small independent bands. The band getting paid is apparently hinged on how many heads they can bring in. So as a show of support, many of us descended on a dingy "live house" on the fifth floor of a nondescript building. The floors were sticky with spilled drinks, the air a bit stagnate. A small horde of people gathered in the entrance room, huddled in protection from the sonic assault of noise booming from the performance room that was behind a double door sound buffer. My coworker didn't go on for another hour. I had helped a friend of mine move her stuff into her new house all day, so I was a bit exhausted, but I made small talk with coworkers for awhile. Then I decided to venture into the inner room to get a peek at the wall of noise.

The band had an interesting mix of wild neon fashion for the lead screamer, a trucker hat for the drummer, and goth hair for the bassist. The lead screamer hammered on his guitar in lush ear splitting glory, the wall of noise was literally ear deafening. I enjoyed their oddness, but my ears were beginning to wine from the assault, so I retreated to the other room. I wasn't the only one, a large contingent of the assembled crowd joined me in the waiting room. A few bands later, my coworker's band took the stage.

They had a way more (comparatively) mellow sound. Hard rock with synthesizers and love searching lyrics. And a drum machine. They had the rockstar vibe down, but suffered from the relatively small crowd. They were the most popular band of the night though, with many guys and girls crowding around the bottom of the stage.

I couldn't help but think they might have been even better with some theatrics of some sort, but I suppose straight up rock n roll has it's place too. So after the show I was a bit drunk, but found my train home. I was a bit surprised to be sitting on the same local commuter train as the wild sonic assault band from earlier. They were clearly bummed out by the crowd reaction. They voices down, bitter small talk about how the crowd had just been "wrong" for their type of music and what not. It was a bitter-but-accustomed sound in their voices, I couldn't help but feel they rarely got the recognition they were looking for. I felt a bit sorry for them so I turned (they were right next to me) and said,
"I know this is a bit sudden, but your show was really interesting, can I take your picture?"

The happy surprise on their faces was vibrant, "You were at our show?" the lead screamer said, his voice conveying they rarely heard anything from "fans" at all. I said yes, and told them honestly that I had enjoyed their energy, and that although I hadn't caught most of the lyrics, I had fun listening to them. They were quite excited to talk to someone who had actually seen them perform, and we talked for the next 15 minutes or so until I got to my stop. They had been playing together for about 4 years total, but they often fought about the band they said. ("It's kind of like families, we just fight a lot.") They dreamed about playing overseas, but had no money for it. They had a lot of time though, they all seemed to be burned-out regular people. I guess it could be said they were True Basement Rockstars. I enjoyed our conversation, but then I jumped off the train and returned to the silence of the night.

another day

another day
like any other
today, yesterday and tomorrow

vines of sorrow
trees of quiet solitude

another day
of scorching heat fading
into a hollow night

winter wanders down from clouds of gray
slate, ice, cold mark, midday

one hour
and then the next

somewhere beyond my eyelids
i sense the crying of the solemn rain

jumping off point

This entry should be skipped by the easily upset. I was off to work this morning, my mind lost in a fog of morning thoughts. I usually take the express train half-way in the morning because of the obvious convenience (the train doesn't run the whole distance to work though). Our train is speeding along somewhere between one stop and the next, the outside world a distant blur. My eyes scan a webpage listing something incidental about life on planet earth, my mind is distracted. Suddenly there is a thud, and the emergency breaks slam on. The video displays light up in vivid orange, alerting passengers that the emergency breaks have been applied. The train shutters to a stop at a non-regular station. There is a heavy pause, and then the young train driver gets on the intercom. His voice is shaking slightly, he sounds unsteady. "Due to a human body incident, the train is currently stopped. Your understanding is greatly appreciated." The euphemism is not lost on any of us, someone just jumped in front of the train. In less than a minute, the first responders from the station rush towards our train car. They are looking down below us. People start to stare in our direction. One train worker starts to put up "do not enter" tape to hold off the gawkers. An old lady next to me says to the air, "The body is under us." My eyes meet a young woman across the way as the old woman says that. The young woman begins to cry, upset and grossed out. Another old man sitting on the other side of me mutters, "No way he could have survived that. We are in an express train." The emergency workers have now crowded onto the platform, from various support services. Several of them hold a large blue tarp around our train platform to shield the extraction from the other people on the opposite platform. I am surprised by the speed of their arrival, but realize we have been in the train for quite awhile. The old woman gasps, "Here comes the body!" and I look away. I think about the axiom "what has been seen can not be unseen" and decide to not look. Most of the other people in the train can't rip their eyes away. We are still in the train. Workers with sponges and buckets arrive. About this time I notice the jumper's shoe on the platform, encircled by chalk. The emergency workers had circled it to better capture it in their digital documentation of the incident. The shoe, which had apparently flown off in the impact, stood alone with it's sole next to it. Alone on the platform, the last verification of the man's jump.

nakayama's wedding

My Japanese friend Nakayama (who I have known since I was in my mid-teens) got married in Korea. Because she was going to marry a friend that I had introduced her to, they both invited me to come to the wedding.

Weddings are a funny cultural thing, and each country has it's own unique attitudes towards marriage. The Korean wedding was done in two stages, the first was kind of "Western" styles. Most Korean weddings are held in a Wedding Hall specifically designed for weddings. It was mostly in Korean, but occasionally heavily accented Japanese. The next was the "Korean" style wedding, held in the basement of the wedding hall. A lot of unique customs. Like the bride and groom holding a piece of cloth between them and the parents of the groom throwing walnuts onto the cloth bridge to determine how many kids the couple would produce. My friend got six.... goodluck! And the groom giving a serious piggy back ride in front of everyone near the end of the ceremony. Culture is fascinating.

transformation

I often wonder how much a city changes me. How long do you have to live in a place before the place begins to live in you? I remember eons ago the moment when suddenly, like magic, I understood voices around me. It was like adjusting the focus on a camera lens, suddenly noise twisted into words. Recently I feel like I am hypersensitive to smells. Many foreign people complain that Japanese people are picky about the slightest of odors. And I am wondering if that is happening to me. Although as if I was blind my whole life, and now I can see a bit of light, this sensitivity is a bit bewildering. Intoxicating, confusing. Aren't my senses suppose to decrease with age? Or maybe this has nothing to do with localizing, maybe it is the last push effort of my sense before fading away into older age. Or maybe a momentary peak of my awareness. Who knows. Fascinating, none the less.

reality and what not

I find myself wondering too much about things that don't really matter. I wonder if that is the nature of being human, to get lost in mental loops of disassociated reality.

A few days ago, I rode around Tokyo with a camera strapped to my neck like a reckless necklace made of string and ducktape. It wasn't the most stylish, but I was curious to capture the biker's perspective. It had been awhile since I road a bike, and I had expected the streets of downtown Tokyo to be unfriendly to bicycles. I was happily surprised that it was quite easy to glide along the streets, pavement sliding under me like a treadmill. Me and the companion that accompanied me on this adventure, must have snaked all over downtown. Pushed by pedal power.

Text messages blasting in bursts. Silence. Views. Thoughts. Disconnected.

In pop culture thoughts: I ended up seeing the final episode of the American TV show LOST. Being millions of miles away from America, I do not see most American TV. I think I saw the first episode, and maybe parts of other episodes since then. So it surprised me that I felt like I basically understood the finale. Does that mean that fans wasted 6 years of their lives? I doubt it, it probably speaks instead to the clarity of the authors of the show. Or maybe I just dig entertainment enough I could postulate on things I didn't know based on the language of drama. Who knows.

I somehow stumbled on someone describing an interesting meme they were trying to start. (Don't you love the chaos of the internet?) As you can see by the link it was a way to generate "your own" album cover. Click here to see the final result. I followed the instructions on that site in order to come up with my own "band" (named honestly and ironically "Gelotophilia" -- the pleasure of liking people to laugh at you) and "album" (which was the last part of the quote "Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved."). The cover shot was acquired from this random user. Oh the internet, it is pure randomness fed into the brain in bursts.