Archive for August, 2006
August 31, 2006 at 9:39 am · Filed under Experiences, Travels
This is the wonderful piece of shore I was talking about:
there were interesting sand/rock formations…check out flickr account for more.
After the shore we headed to a temple. Temples are very quiet, spiritual places. But they also seem a little like amusement parks. I feel bad for saying that…but it’s true. There are all these stations to pray, wish, get fortune, etc. for 100-200円. I go for the fortunes – usually the love fortunes as that is the one area of my life where I feel lost in a deep black void of uncertainty, unknowingness, and blindness. And look cool, this one came with a little paper doll charm.
After the temple we went to a lighthouse and walked around its base. The plants were a little different in that area – they had to be of kinds strong enough to withstand surrounding angry oceans. I saw a man napping, took this picture, and only later did I look at it again and laugh a little to myself. The grass in the foreground totally gives the impression that I am hiding, spying on him.
After the lighthouse we went to an onsen. My first time and thankfully I did not get kicked out due to tattoos (sooome places don’t accept tattoos…I don’t think the majority though). So here is the obligatory bit about what I felt during my first experience of being the only naked foreigner around many naked strangers: yes, it was tough to get over complexes in my head but I was by no means going to let them stop me from having an enjoyable experience.
I think the first thing I let go was the thought that I would be fatter than all the other women. That was pretty easy because in the past year I have been getting sick of the world’s body size obsession… whether poking at the bones of the skinniest or cranking out stats on average rolls’n'folds per person per geographical area (can we get that on a google map please so I can decide where I can move next?)…yeah, it is a problem but also too much of an obsession and obsession does not solve problems. Anyway – I had been attempting to achieve a mental and physical balance when it comes to that issue and the onsen was a good test. I found myself just not caring that much.
The second thing was worrying that I might not do something right. Onsen’s have some rules…shower before going into the baths and don’t put towel in the bath is all I can remember. But if you shower, then bathe, then sauna, should you shower before you go back into the bath? What if there are multiple baths? Do you shower in between each? What is the appropriate shower intensity?
The last thing on my mind was my foreign-ess. I knew I could expect stares and I got some stares. Going into a bath for the first time, a group of 3 women left immediately after I entered. My mind fired off on a “it’s because of me” tangent which I shook off and then put up a guard against further self-centered thoughts. It stayed up too!
So all in all, it was a great experience. There was an outdoor bath that looked out onto the ocean. Hot water, cool breeze, the sound of the tide…I left feeling warm and relaxed.
Yuko’s parents took us out for sushi after the onsen. So in Japan, there are still many people who do not speak English. But they might know some English words and if you get to a point where you can try to communicate a little in Japanese (like…tiny bit little) they will eventually see you struggling and use some, even if just a few words, English. But the entire weekend, I did not hear a single word of English from Yuko’s parents. (Just had earthquake…vibrations still echoing in my body.) It was really cool and a good chance for me to just have to try.
Now I am pooped…like I was after eating that sushi, and drinking sake. More…I hope…before I go on holidays again…this Saturday…Kyuushuu :)
August 30, 2006 at 9:27 am · Filed under Experiences, Travels
UBC sup (Sid) came yesterday and I presented what I have been working on for the past six months. It is amazing how presentations can reveal the true level of clarity that you have in your work. Before his visit I was busy trying to tie together my thoughts with what I have been working on and I think the presentation broke a lot of those down and now I will be busy rearranging the pieces and pulling them back together again. Not saying this in a negative way. I am still really interested in my problem space and think I now have some mechanisms to simplify it and make it more focused which is good. Sorry that’s all vague.
But for my weekend…in some chunks.
Chunk 1: Saturday morning I met Mayumi in Tokyo and we boarded a bus to Asahi in Chiba prefecture. We both snoozed a little on the 2 hour ride but woke up in time for the Asahi stop. The next one was ours…Asahi New Town…but we started talking…talking…talking…suddenly we were out here:
and we realized that we had gone too far. We got off (what else can you do) and that is our bus driving away. For a split second I felt like we were stranded in the middle of nowhere but then I remembered that where we were, there wasn’t too much nowhere and besides, we could always cool down at the ramen shop across the way:
No really, Mayumi’s friend Yuko was going to pick us up by car so we gave her a ring and she came down here for some lunch. Most grateful for her having to go out of the way-ness. I wish I took more pictures inside this restaurant. It had an obsession with Coke paraphernalia, and this weird Old Western theme going on. But they served ramen…such an interesting mix. Another interesting mix was what I ordered: soup curry ramen. Curry-flavoured ramen (Japanese-style curry of course).
One more picture before I start some work:
On the way to this wonderful piece of shore. More pictures later or go to my flickr account if you are impatient.
August 25, 2006 at 4:24 pm · Filed under Reading
I am currently reading Personal, Portable, Pedestrian – a collection of writings on the mobile phone in Japanese life. A big focus of the book is the keitai (mobile) and youth culture. Adoption of texting started in the 90s with girls sending messages coded in numbers via their pagers. This method of communicating short, mundane messages helped young people stay connected to their friends throughout the day, no matter how shallow the message content may have seemed. (Like, “what are you doing”, “good morning”, etc.) The messages being coded and sent / received with a personal device also helped create a communication space among groups of teenagers – their private sphere away from “the others” (ie. adults, the man).
It is quite remarkable how pagers and then the keitai were adopted and I enjoy reading about studies of the kids in Shibuya and Harajuku. At the same time, my mind was wandering off to experiences of my own youth and the “methods” we used to hide things from adults and maintain connectedness when we felt that our teachers and parents only wanted to drive us apart. (Okay so I’ll admit that when I was younger I had a bit of that “the world is against me” complex…I’ve grown up…a bit). I think that everyone used these things – coded notes, secret languages, signs, etc. I still use some…like the special signal for when the person on the other end of the phone brings something up and it is not exactly an opportune time to talk about it.
I still like to keep that connectedness, but it has been slipping away as I age. I haven’t missed Canadian food so much but I miss being able to send SMS messages to the girls and I miss receiving them even more. I still remember my last hours in Vancouver, sitting behind the airport security gates, sending texts back and forth knowing that those were my last moments for that kind of communication. The texts are saved in my phone which has not been turned on since coming here. That phone is now this artifact of going to Japan memories. I’ll have to save it for a long time.
*sigh* Just kidding. Super pumped for the weekend. Hope I take a lot of pictures : )
August 24, 2006 at 7:49 pm · Filed under In the News, Random Thoughts, Technology & Effects
I don’t post many pictures of myself. Maybe because I also don’t take many pictures of myself. But other people might have some of me like Kelvin seen below:
He is another intern from Vancouver…SFU I think…but different company. Click on that pictures if you want to check out his flickr account. He is young and energetic so gets around Japan a lot and has taken some good photos. This was taken when we went to a festival at the temple in Kawasaki Daishi. (Update: I meant to add…if you want to see me in yukata then you can explore his photostream.)
So what am I thinking today…? Well, did you hear about the Report Abuse button for Windows Messenger? I like that they are looking for ways to solve the predators problem, but I wonder how the button model will work. Buttons are so easy to press. 9-1-1 is easy to press but a real person answers your call and you have to either hang up or say something. What happens when people abuse the abuse button?
On the lighter side of the news is the Llama on the loose in the Vancouver area. The article picture is gold:
I might have to print and frame it. Put it by my bedside. Llama on the loose…heh…album name.
August 22, 2006 at 7:06 pm · Filed under Experiences
Summer is over in 9…8…7…
I think the climax was marked by this past weekend and the Nagasawa summer festival and now that the event is over, I am a little sad. The band was fun but I don’t think I will have the opportunity to play with them again as my internship is almost half over (yikes!). Since Sunday night I have been plotting a way to join another band. Such schemes mostly involve buying a ukelele and singing outside a studio until someone feels sorry for me and adopts me.
But really, the performance went well (I think…still have to see the videos). The heat made my fingers a little slippery and sweaty on the keyboard but in general, I hit most of the right notes.
I guess I did not talk much about the band or the summer festival. Basically, there is a “music circle” at NTT and the members of the circle form bands for various events, pick some songs to cover, practice for a few months before the event, play, and then retire (can’t find right word).
I was invited to join one of the bands to play keyboard for 3 songs, and sing another 2: a Japanese song by PUFFY and Franz Ferdinand’s “Do You Want To”. The PUFFY song was a little hard, not because it was in Japanese but because it was a tad high for me and not totally inline with my regular music tastes. But I had fun with it and managed (again…I *think*…need to see video) to coordinate my dance moves and Japanese lyric recall at the last minute. *Almost* made no mistakes with the words. “Do You Want To” was great to perform in terms of there being a particular mood to the song that I had fun acting out. Hmm…I hope there is another opportunity in this lifetime to get on stage.
Next entries »
