Monday, May 30, 2011

Tottori


I went to Tottori, Tottori Prefecture this weekend, and it absolutely took all the time and energy I had. It also rained all day Saturday and Sunday, unfortunately; it's hard to appreciate a new city when wind and cold rain make it difficult to walk around and enjoy the place.

In fact, the rain was part of a typhoon that, apparently, really picked up Sunday afternoon back where I live in Shikoku, and I almost didn't make it home. JR announced that it was limiting train service to Kagawa, but instead of staying the night in Okayama, I decided to take the train as far as it would take me. In the end that was the right decision, since the typhoon was steadily abating, and by the time we got to Kojima, the conductor announced that we would be going all the way to Matsuyama, after all.

The cheer that went up through my car reminded me of the celebration in Star Wars: A New Hope when Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie are saved from certain death in the garbage chute. I guess I wasn't the only one who got on board feeling apprehensive about a night in Kagawa, and hoping against hope that it would turn out all right!

The reason I went to Tottori was not for its famous sand dunes, alack, but for a job interview-and-exam at the capitol. My initial feeling was that it was brutal, and all the other applicants were much better qualified than I, but I'm still glad I went and gave it my best shot.

Because of space considerations I couldn't bring any larger camera than the one in my cell phone; otherwise I would have liked to show you the church in Tottori. It's much bigger than the one I go to here, and it has a lovely woodwork floor. The people were incredibly friendly, and if I do get the opportunity to live and work in Tottori, I would make that decision based on the wonderful impression they made on me.

After my interview I had a brief hour before boarding the train, so I treated myself to a melon soda float with my early dinner. Yum!!!

Friday, May 27, 2011

opulence and simplicity


I loved this bike parked in front of the Hermes store in Ginza.
It's a high fashion kind of place.

Friday, May 20, 2011

congratulations

Congratulations to my friends J.O. and A.B. on their recent engagements,
and to J.K. who got married last week!

As Grandma Kitty used to say,
"Ain't love grand!"

peach rose

Monday, May 16, 2011

potteresque

Lovely symmetry.
This is from Tokyo University,
which is chock full of
"potteresque"
architecture.

It's Monday night, after a long, busy, fun weekend. On Friday night Tenshing and I decided to go to a barbecue hosted by our new Regional Advisor for any JETs interested in coming. Her place was supposedly in the Emerald City area, which isn't very close to us but close enough that we're roughly familiar with it.

Anyway, we set off around 5:45pm armed with e-mail directions, a Google map, and Google directions. Familiar landmarks went flying by. Soon we had to be alert for the first road change. Prematurely, I yelled, "This is it!" and we drove up a ramp to the freeway, and all was well for about 30 seconds, until we realized we actually should have gone a few hundred meters farther down the road. This particular freeway was taking us relentlessly, inexorably in the opposite direction to the one we wanted! After an unbelievably long stretch of freeway-- and some halfhearted suggestions to sneak through the barrier where it was widest-- the road spit us out in Seiyo, which is about as far from Emerald City as Kansas.

Undeterred, we set off again, glad we'd told our RA that we wouldn't show up until 7pm. We should just make it.

But we didn't. We got lost.

Again, and again, and again.

By the time we finally rocked up to her little town (which, ironically enough, is in the hinterland between Emerald City and Seiyo), we decided we were bold enough to try to find her house on foot. So we parked the car at the designated spot and started walking down the street, looking for an orange pole. Of course, by this time... past 8pm... it was full night and everything looked orange or grey. It wasn't until five minutes later, when we came to a broad bridge to nowhere, that we decided to throw in the towel on our own resources and call Amy to come meet us. She came upon us as we were within a stone's throw of the car, and her house was just a hop, skip, and a jump away.

Luckily, the people at the party were already comfortably chatting and eating, and no one seemed upset at how unfashionably late we were, though I'm sure no one understood how extraordinarily hilarious the whole thing was to Tenshing and me. Never mind. We forgot all about the car and the clock with friends, laughter, and heaps of grilled meat and vegetables. And when we finally realized how late it was, the trip home was short and uneventful.

Besides being a great evening, it affirmed a few things for me:

1. It's more fun to do things with friends, especially getting lost.
2. You don't need to be drunk to have a good time.
3. Never, ever listen to my opinion on directions if we're in a car together. :)
4. The Bermuda Triangle ain't got nothing on Japanese mountain roads.



Time is quicksilver now. There is so much to do, and so little time, whatever I choose. But in preparation for the 25th, I've been jogging and practicing choreography, and earlier this evening I did TurboKick Round 31--good and hard!

There are a lot of much less interesting items to keep me busy, though. Handwriting resumes and arranging schedules come to mind. I've applied for one job in Japan so far, and I should have a better idea about where I stand with it by the end of the month. If I land it, it would be an unexpected turn of events, but considering the shape of my life so far, hardly incongruous.

you're a girl, or maybe a wagon♪

Speaking of [noun] fulla [noun]...

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

me and my pocket fulla dreams

(from post production on the commercial that won 4th place at this year's Ehime Asahi TV competition)

drive-by: inaka edition

Something wicked this way comes.

A bundle of high tension, supersensitive appendages, poison, and pure malice.



Then BAM!
Somebody drives right over the thing.
It's dead.
Of course it may not have been a drive-by smash; it may have been a walk-by. Possibly my neighbor Tenshing happened to see the critter on his morning walk to school, and this carnage was the work of a quick heel in steel-reinforced boots.

Why do I think that? It was still twitching when I passed it on my way to the office.

Eurgh.

To make things perfectly clear, let me just write:
^DO NOT WANT.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

trapped!

After my long, lovely vacation, coming back home felt like coming back to a place where someone else had lived. Only after Christmas and New Year's two years ago, when I went home home, did I experience this much of a disconnect on coming back to my apartment. Why? My best guess is that staying with Mr. and Mrs. M allowed me so completely to escape from the job, the boreout (not a constant, but a recent issue), and the subtle accumulation of the stresses of living alone, that I actually experienced something sought by everyone on holiday. Refreshment.

(As an aside, I believe the longterm emotional health of Japanese society is not sustainable as long as people are unwilling or unable to take vacations of any meaningful length.)

Refreshment. That, and when I looked at my desktop calendar, I recalled the price we pay for Golden Week in Japan: there are exactly zero public holidays for the rest of this month and next month. The next one won't be until July 18th, Marine Day, and it falls just before my international association's busiest program. (In fact, I will probably spend Marine Day making sure I'm ready to move out of the apartment at a moment's notice, since my successor will
move in during the middle of the program.)

Luckily for me, I still have 15+ days of vacation I can theoretically use. Theoretically, since I've known for months that I'll never be able to use them all. Still, it's nice to know I can afford to take off an afternoon or even, I may say, an entire day to mail 5kg boxes of books, haul futons to the cleaner's, swab the decks, and otherwise take care of business.

The most important order of business at the moment is tracking a quarry that is successfully eluding many people today, in Japan, in the US, in Australia, across the globe.

Employment.

Oh job hunting, how I hate you.

"I'm scared of it," said a friend of mine recently. "Maybe one reason I'm staying on at this job is because I'm just too darn scared to be job hunting again."

I can't help but think that the whole field of career counseling and the whole experience of job hunting has a long period of evolution to undergo. Until it does, though, we poor chaps will have to go on knocking at every door and performing feats of verbal and mental agility to convince not only potential employers but ourselves also, that we are right for this position, or that that position could have been invented just for us; we are so looking forward to receiving the honor of a phone call with this company, or truly excited for the opportunity to try to convince the higher being at that company that we are his next Most Valuable Employee.

And in the end, perhaps, we will emerge bedraggled but vaguely victorious, having earned the right to put our names on timecards, desks, or cubicles. We will breathe successive sighs of relief at having finally escaped the grisly game of Unemployment Fruit Basket Upset. But eventually, within two hours or two months, we will almost certainly ask ourselves if we might have found a job that was more satisfying, if only we had persevered a little longer.

'Cynical much?' you may be thinking.

Only realistic, I hope.

But at any rate, I don't hold with being trapped by adverse circumstances. Day by day I will mark off another knocked-on door, I will knock down the barricade, and in the end the only thing that will be trapped is my quarry.

Would be nice if it pays okay.

Let me never be in a position to appreciate this.

But never let me lose the ability to appreciate this...
Tee hee.
Gotcha, Ginza!

Sunday, May 8, 2011

timeless aspirations


My favorite line: "I want to be able to point to something and say, 'I did that.'"

Plus.... 80s HAIR!!!

Friday, May 6, 2011

reconciliation

Cor and I decided, after half a dozen texts on either side, to meet on Friday afternoon in Shinjuku to visit a major bookstore, and then go on to Yoyogi Park. So after a busy morning at the MC's house and a quick lunch, I headed to the train station, texting that I was on my way and would be there in 45, in 30 minutes. But Cor texted back to say that he was going to be unavoidably detained for some time, and that I should feel free to check out Kinokuniya without him.

Put me in a bookstore and I will get lost in the rapture of discovery till the cows come home, but after two or three hours I started to think that perhaps Cor wasn't coming, or had never meant to come. I'll just flip through the rest of this book, I thought, and then I'll go home. Just then my cell phone buzzed with a text from Cor saying he was so sorry to have kept me waiting, and where in Shinjuku should we meet? It took him a bit longer to get to the station, and I wasn't feeling particularly anything by that point. Still, I'd missed my chance to call foul and so I thought I'd better see it through.

As it turned out, a friend had been robbed and Cor had been making calls and inquiries about the stolen items. There, I thought; I knew he must have had a good reason.

We finally found a table at one of the crowded cafes and began to talk, at first rather awkwardly, like strangers, but after all we'd barely spoken in two and a half years. Soon the servers began to dim the lights and bring tealight candles around to every table. It was about 5pm and too late to enjoy the park, but we made instead for Shinjuku Park and a particular building where I'd had the privilege to intern five years ago. That company has since moved away, but the Starbucks was still there and so we had some more tea and coffee, still chatting. Around this point I ventured to ask whether it was not actually his girlfriend who had been robbed, and Cor replied that it was the person who used to be his girlfriend. They'd been broken up for a few months, in fact. I didn't press the issue, but felt genuinely sorry for her and for them in whatever complicated form of post-relationship they might be. On the way back to the station, we stopped for dinner at a jazzy sort of pizza bar and talked about our jobs and ideas for the future. We came to the conclusion that Cor should probably find work in Thailand since he was shivering in even the mild cool of that spring evening.

When we said goodbye at the platform, I was surprised that Cor should ask me to let him know if I had any free time during the rest of my stay in Tokyo, so we could meet again-- maybe get to Yoyogi Park, since we'd missed it that day. At the same time, I realized with some surprise that I wanted to.

Cor's company is close by to where I was staying, and on Monday night after he was done with work, we had an impromptu dinner at a simple family-style Italian place in the area. I told him about the video project I had started with Gabrielle and Noemi, and insisted that he be a part of it. We decided to meet the next afternoon at Harajuku, in order to shoot the video in Yoyogi Park.

Tuesday was my last full day in Tokyo, and although the skies threatened rain, I was determined to make the best of it. After a nice, leisurely morning with Mr. and Mrs. M, I hied me to the train station, texting Cor that I was on my way. I got off the train at Harajuku, threaded my way through the throngs of people crowding the tiny station, and looked around. Interestingly enough, there were quite a few folks with black and bright yellow signs standing around, one of them with a megaphone, proclaiming the reality of Hell and the importance of repentance and conversion. I almost went up to a couple of them, typical Japanese middle-aged women, to ask what sect they belonged to, but I didn't know how long I'd have to wait around the station area, so I decided against it.

Instead I picked a likely direction and set off, keen to find some lunch. At the table next to me a man and a woman, possibly European and Chinese, were speaking in English about Christianity, some conference they'd attended, and the woman's hardships. This is surely my day for evangelicals, I thought. They didn't seem unfriendly, but I thought I had better get on my way, and I headed back towards Harajuku station, pausing to take a few pictures here and there. Finally my cell phone buzzed. Cor hadn't seen my earlier text and was apparently just then getting ready to come. I would have to wait a bit longer. With some chagrin I reflected that we had very different ideas of "afternoon."

It began to drizzle--luckily I'd brought an umbrella-- and after hanging around the station for a while to observe the great variety of people coming through it, I found another cafe. Cor arrived a little after 4, and the rain was coming down in earnest, but we went to Yoyogi anyway, with some idea of finding a picnic shelter to film under. There was no such structure in sight, ultimately, but between thickly-foliaged trees and our two umbrellas, we made it work. The rain drummed on. For the video we talked about things like when and where we first met, memorable outings, and Tokyo's good and bad points. Then Cor took the camera and started interviewing me, winding up with a request for a final message for whoever would watch it in the future. Painfully aware that my attempts at eloquence in Japanese flounder in half-thoughts and confusion, still I fumbled through and said something about pursuing your interests across the earth, persevering with language study, and enjoying every darn minute of it come what may.

As I stumbled through all this, I wished I had the camera trained on Cor, instead. His eyes were round and quiet, as if I were really saying something worth listening to. Then the interview was over and I dried off the camera, putting it back in the safety of my waterproof bag.

We decided to get back to the train network via Shibuya Station, since Cor said it was about equidistant with Harajuku. As we walked, the rain pelting ever harder, we got to talking about things again, especially the problem he has to solve about how to return the pet hippogriff he and Cora had bought to where she is now living in St. Louis. Suddenly, out of nowhere he came out with this stunner, which even after all our history together caught me off guard:

"Because at some point down the line I may be living with that hippogriff, in St. Louis."

The rain was fiercer than ever, and we kept walking through it, I in tortured silence.

My gosh, I thought, he really loves her. Enough to cross the ocean and give up his country. Then like a beast the thoughts came snarling to the surface. I could never meet them in St. Louis. What was all this for? The hours I waited, the intense feeling that the most important thing was to see him again at all costs, the idea that something significant was happening-- it all seemed in an instant to be so meaningless and false that I could have torn myself in two like Rumpelstiltskin.

"Want to take a break at a cafe?" he said, interrupting the train-wreck in my head.
"Why not?" I said from the pits of gloom.

Who is this guy, anyway, I continued. Why should I care about this? I've done all right for myself; I know I don't need Cor to be happy and fulfilled; why, I've already independently decided I've had done with Japan in general!

We climbed the stairs to another cafe and sat down carefully, noting that not only our shoes and hems but also the backs of our jeans were soaked through with rainwater. I finished dawdling with my bag and sat up straight to face Cor across the rough wooden table.

And then it happened. Cor's kindness and genuine concern in making so many efforts to see me, by the grace of God, finally melted the ice palace of indifference I'd so foolishly allowed, and sometimes encouraged, to crystallize in my heart; it had towered over the plain and simple place where our friendship used to live. I remembered who I was, and I was Cor's friend. And as Cor's friend, the most important thing of all to me was that he should be happy and fulfilled, whatever and whoever he needed for that. How could I have forgotten it? With that realization I felt invincible joy surge inside of me, and I asked, with a real, honest-to-goodness smile, "So when are you going to propose, eh?"

Well, Cor's story wasn't as simple as all that. He wasn't sure he wanted to marry Cora; he wasn't sure of much of anything. What he needed was someone to listen, and someone to talk with. Just an hour before, I would have been the worst choice for this someone, but now I was free to listen and to give all the encouragement and advice I had in me.

Cor took the train past his usual stop to see me off at my connecting platform.

"We'll see each other again sometime, right?" he asked.

My old ice-queen self would have replied with a maybe, but I said, "Yeah, I think so. It was so good to see you and talk so much!"

We hugged, and I kissed him on the cheek, thinking Be happy, Cor. Waving goodbye, I touched my Pasmo card to the gate and walked briskly through the throng of people beyond, picking up speed-- a lifeguard's run, if you know the pace-- to enter the train a moment before the doors closed and pulled me away into the night. I looked past the heads of the strangers around me into the dark cityscape of Tokyo, and smiled.

Cor


Last time, an unavoidable trip to the grocery store cut me off before I got to Cor, who has been in some ways the most influential Japanese person in my life.

Cor and I were conversation partners for a year, six years ago, but what is more, we were friends. And although our friendship skirted around becoming something more for nearly that whole year, it never quite developed, but stayed safe, predictable, and ultimately frustrating-- to me, anyway. I am sorry to say I lost quite a bit of sleep and time over-thinking it. If you've read or seen "He's Just Not That Into You," you'll get the idea.

But unlike that movie, where a man either takes center or exits stage left, Cor always remained somewhere on stage. When I left Japan, we kept up e-mailing just about as often as we'd met to wander the various districts of Tokyo, taking in the sights, sampling the food, and speaking Japanese.

I knew that I had no reason to expect anything from Cor romantically, but I still valued our friendship as if it were a major plot-line in the greatest novel I would ever write. So it was with the greatest joy and trepidation that I looked forward to seeing him again when I came to Japan again in 2008 to work-- alas, nowhere near Tokyo. We met, we walked a bit around the city as before, and all seemed right with the world. In a few days' time I would be leaving for Parts Unknown, of course, but I only thought of how easy it would be to come back to Tokyo for visits.

You, being older and wiser, may not be surprised, though you may laugh at me for the icy cold wave of betrayal I felt when Cor chose that time to confide that he was quite fallen in love with a wonderful girl, Cora, who had recently come to stay in Tokyo.

I didn't blow up, I didn't yell, and I didn't cry. I was just terribly polite, and when we finally parted ways I thought, with an avalanche of emotion: I shall never see him again. Now he's going to have a real girlfriend and there will be no room left for a girl like me, neither quite here nor there.

And I was almost as bad as my word. In over two and a half years we probably exchanged less than half a dozen texts, and met very briefly once; possibly twice. That once, Cor found out I was in Tokyo and came at the last minute to see me off at the airport. I was polite, indifferent.

Then at last came this Easter trip.

Only a day before I left, something in me relented and I texted Cor to tell him I'd be in town. He replied right away.

I wasn't happy with the way I'd left our friendship, and if anything was salvageable, I wanted to save it. I was apprehensive, but I knew I'd been acting like a spoiled, selfish brat. As if our friendship were the plot in a story I was writing! The hurt and resentment that should not have lasted for even a night, I allowed to quietly fester on and on, always denying it, always forcing it down if it ever managed to reach the surface. I knew that I had to forgive God, I had to forgive Cor, and I had to let him go.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

back from the greatest city on earth


...and as yet, there's no sign of giant spiders having moved into my apartment.

I feel I need to write about this. This trip to Tokyo was different from all my previous trips; from the start I knew that I was going up there to say goodbye. No, no one's died. But it was my last opportunity to take a good chunk of vacation time and spend it slowly, savoring the moments with my dear friends.

The majority of the time- the first week or so, in fact- I spent quietly with the M's, an elderly couple who have become like grandparents to me. In the mornings (more or less) I would jog around a park in the neighborhood, and then take a couple hours after lunch to choreograph and practice the 90-minute aerobic session I've been asked to lead at the end of May. Later in the afternoon I would chat with Mrs. M, read, or study German.

As dull as some people would find such a schedule, it was a real, refreshing rest. I hope that in the weeks and months to come I will be able to return to the memories of this time for strength whenever things get too stressful.

The latter part of the vacation was brimming with activity, beginning with a few hours at the Missionaries of Charity house helping many other volunteers prepare meals for the homeless, and ending with a memorable jaunt through pelting rain and eddying puddles in the streets as I hurried 'home' for a final dinner with Mr. and Mrs. M. In between, I went to some places I'd never been before, like St. Mary Cathedral, Tokyo University, and Yoyogi Park, and to some others that I know well enough: Shinjuku, Soka, and Harajuku. And my friends were good enough to make short video messages with me that I will eventually edit together and burn to dvd.

Dear, sweet Gabrielle (as I'll call her) lives in Tokyo itself. She was the president of the piano circle when I joined it, and her fine fingers can dance through compositions that would make me dizzy long before I reached the end of the first bar. Our first stop was the Cathedral, where one wedding was just ending, and another was about to begin. Gabrielle is also a photography hobbyist, and her sense of framing and graphic composition rarely fail to inspire me. From the Waseda University area we went to wind through the uber-fashionable streets of Ginza, where unfortunately signs warning "no photographs" abound, or else where a pristinely dressed and coiffed shop assistant will approach smiling apologetically, and ask you ever so politely to refrain from taking pictures in the stairwell. Gabrielle has a practical, clerical job at a certain company in the city, but her dream and ambition is to one day manage an art gallery, and we tiptoed through a few of those, too. Although we refreshed ourselves with the best coffee and tiramisu in Ginza (if not all of Tokyo), we were a bit worn out by the time we got to BIC Camera. Still, before we knew it we had spent about three hours inside, looking at lenses, filters, bags, and attachments.

Another friend-- I'll call her Noemi-- took a train out of Ibaraki and difficult repair and recovery work at home to meet me at my closest station. We decided to go over our old stomping grounds at Dokkyo University, and she was a great sport about trekking all over the city as I retraced paths left unwalked for five years in search of memories, in order to formally lay them to rest, and of course to capture it all on camera. It absolutely wouldn't have been the same without her. We didn't spend a lot of time together as students, when she was my senior or senpai in the karate club, but since coming here to work, Noemi has been as true and solid a friend as I could hope to have, miles away. She was there to listen and to talk when I really needed it. And on top of all that she's a strong, smart, and beautiful person. After the trek around memory-city, we forged a new adventure of our own in deciding to visit Tokyo University. As we reached it, as if on cue, the rain began to pour, and so we bought an umbrella at the same Natural Lawson I'd taken some high school girls to last summer, and made our way to the red gate entrance of the University. We laughed, we took pictures, and we found ourselves locked out of a Starbucks with a tray in our (well, Noemi's) hands.
If I don't end here, I won't get to the grocery store before it closes, so, this is all for now.