Archive for August 2010

in which iain jumps off a bridge


I wanted to go to Gujo Hachiman to see Bon Odori. Iain wanted to go to Gujo Hachiman to go here. Sorry, more specifically:


Gujo Hachiman is, apparently, well known for its massive stone bridge, which the local boys like to leap off. The minute our students first mentioned this, you could see Iain's eyes light up with an alarming glee that someone as chicken as me will never quite understand. Even more disconcertingly, when we arrived at the most likely bridge, there were no local boys in sight to reassure us that this was, in fact, the right place to suicidally fling yourself off into the abyss; instead, there was just a sign warning people to be careful. Though Iain was convinced this was a green light to go ahead and jump, I still begged him - all sorts of horrific visions flashing though my head - to ask every single person we saw wandering by if this was in fact the right place (since most people were fellow tourists, he eventually had to go into a nearby restaurant to ask). It turned out Iain was right, and by the time I finally gave in, he had attracted quite a crowd, especially since he did it not once but TWICE. Because he's completely insane. So, in honor of his birthday this last Sunday, here is Iain in action:






And so, happy, happy birthday to my awesome, if insane, boyfriend! Your willingness to leap off high things never ceases to amaze me. I hope your next year is even more fun.

happy birthday grandpa!


above:  Everytime I think of my grandfather, this is what I picture. 

A very happy birthday to my awesome grandfather Monty! (And also a belated birthday apology to my equally wonderful grandmother Marilyn, who missed my new resolution to embarrass family members on their birthdays on my blog by about a month. Sorry, Grandma - next year!) I don't think you could find more loving, affectionate (er, see above) and supportive grandparents anywhere, and  I miss them all the time, and think of them often. Happy Birthday Grandpa! I hope you're having a great day back in California! 

Gujo Hachiman at night...


... may be my new mental "happy place" forever. 


In the late afternoon, the banks of the Yoshida River are lit hundreds of tiny candles:


I don't know if it's just a summer thing or not, but it was definitely one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen anywhere.


Bon Odori in Japan!


At risk of sounding like Homer Simpson*, one of my lifelong dreams has been to see a Bon Odori festival in Japan. Bon Odori as practiced by the Japanese American communities in the Bay Area and LA was always the high point of summer for me as a kid - my mom, Maggie and I would all put on yukata and join hundreds of other JAs as they marched in circles to the scratchy recordings of syrupy enka ballads or - at some of the bigger festivals - the thunderous beat of a taiko drum.  Some dances, like tanko bushi we knew by heart; others - there was one diabolically complicated katchi-katchi dance in particular - we flailed our way through. We ate greasy, sugary festival food, we'd break out of step to wave at my dad videotaping on the sidelines, we'd win armfuls of wan-looking goldfish in tiny plastic bags, none of whom ever survived more than a week. It was awesome fun. 

So one of my main reasons for visiting Gujo Hachiman was its famous month-long Bon Odori celebration. There's dancing almost every night in late July through mid August, plus five nights of all night dancing. ("Five nights!" our ryokan-owner said tiredly. "I like one night.") The night we were in town wasn't one of the epic all-nighters but I was still blown away by how much energy everyone had for their monthlong nightly dance party:


above: Check out how happy these guys are! 


Live Bon Odori music was probably the most immediate difference between Japanese and stateside festivals. 


Also the dances. Like the dances back home, anyone is welcome to jump in at any time, but these - wedged into a narrow street - felt very different, with more footwork, less fans, towels and katchi-katchis, and if some of the gestures were familiar, the sequences themselves were not.



above: Iain goes for it! 

Unfamiliarity was not a problem for Iain, who quickly threw himself into the line and went for it anyway. It seemed pretty silly to come eight hours by train and not join in, after all, so after a moment of being self-conscious, I jumped in after him. The dances weren't too hard to pick up, and we didn't get many stares - though I'm pretty sure some of the dancing experts who stick to the middle of the circle made a point of dancing beside us so we could watch their movements at least a few times. I hadn't danced in Bon Odori in a good eight or nine years - and I'm not much of a dancer in any situation - but as the expressions of unbridled glee on the two guys in the picture up earlier can attest, Bon dancing is really fun. It felt unimaginably cool to be doing it in Japan, these dances that were so different and yet familiar to the versions that I grew up doing in the States. I am so happy we got to do it. 



above: the empty streets near our ryokan

I had forgotten how tiring Bon Odori dancing can be. After three or four dances, we stopped to get some french fries (soy sauce mayo flavoured!) from one of the food stalls; the rain that had been falling lightly got a bit heavier, and we wandered back to our hotel through empty lantern-lit streets, leaving the rest of Gujo Hachiman to their dancing.

* Also, like Homer, I wouldn't mind eating the world's biggest hoagie: a year spent in Philadelphia clearly had a bigger influence one me than I realized. Mmm, hoagie.

happy birthday mom!!


above: probably the last time I rode a cable car in San Francisco.

Happy happy birthday to my mom! I love my forest-weeding, crazy awesome garden-having mom, and am grateful every day for having such a wonderful, funny, trailblazing mother. I don't get to see her nearly enough, but thanks to the power of Skype, I can see her (and Lucy the dog) more than I might otherwise. So, yay for Wendy and happy birthday, Mom! 

Gujo Hachiman



above: Gujo Hachiman castle.

Over the next few days, I'll be posting photos from our 3 day vacation into central Honshu; our holiday was last week, so by the time you read this, I'll be toiling away at work again. So anyway: our first stop was Gujo Hachiman, a small river town nestled in some amazingly lush green mountains. We could have spent way more time there than we actually did - stepping off the (improbably tiny single car) train, we were immediately struck by how quiet and remote it felt. If you are ever in Gifu, I highly recommend dropping by for a visit - it's really unlike any other place I've ever been. 


A quick digression on trains: as we are both trying to save money out here, figuring out what to do with our brief time off was a bit difficult, because traveling in Japan is - to my mind, anyhow - prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, one way around the stratospheric transportation prices is the "18 kippu," which is issued three times a year by Japan Railway. Basically, for about $115, you get five days (whenever you want) of unlimited travel on all local JR trains. When you consider that a one way trip to Tokyo from Numazu on the local averages about $25 already, this can be a great deal. Unfortunately, as we both found out, the word "unlimited" is far less important than the word "local." Japan may not look like a big country and we were only going two prefectures away, but getting to Gujo Hachiman from Numazu, for example, took us eight hours and six transfers. Bewilderingly, it took us even longer to come back from a city that was geographically closer (we also had a lot of difficulty just planning the routes; there are perhaps unsurprisingly few resources in English and more surprisingly few physical maps of the routes). This was very fun and exciting for the first day (so much time to read!); by the third, I was dangerously close to becoming consumed with a simmering hatred for myself for thinking this would be a good idea, my backpack for being so unreasonably heavy, train station convenient store food, and the JR system in general. 


Fortunately, I didn't have time to dwell on that when we were actually in town - as I mentioned before, Gujo Hachiman was really beautiful, with lots of old buildings and narrow streets.


The guide map promised that this narrow alley would transport us back centuries in time. Fortunately, we emerged in 2010, so all was well.



Mmm, fish sticks.

Anyway, lots more photos of Gujo Hachiman and elsewhere tomorrow! 

OKAY NUMAZU!


Aside from Teiko's visit two weeks ago, we really don't get out much. So when one of my students invited me to her belly dancing performance, which was part of a larger "Numazu Summer Garden" festival, we were all too happy to check it out. Good thing too, because the belly dancing was only the opening act of an *awesome* evening-long concert on a stage stretched out over the Kanogawa river.


above: women in yukata


above: Asuka "Furankurin," who sings a mean "Natural Woman."

My favorite band by far were these guys, who began their set with a loud OKAY NUMAZU!!, opened with the Blues Brothers and sang a lot of Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin. 


The crowd was pretty quiet a first... 


... but soon there were lots of people dancing up towards the front.


Also, the concert was briefly interrupted to hold a wedding onstage! I have no idea why - it was definitely a weird moment to be the clueless non-Japanese speakers in the crowd - but I do very much hope that if I ever get married, I too can be married by a man in a red silk jacket and a pimp hat. I could probably do without a crowd of strangers looking on impatiently, though. 

Numazu Summer Festival


The first day of Teiko's visit coincided with the Numazu Summer Festival. Numazu is usually quite sleepy, so it was a bit surreal to see the downtown transform into a crowd of food stalls and more people than I'd ever seen in the city wearing bright yukata and An-Pan Man masks (above). 


Above and below: music outside the station.




The best part of the festival - well, to be honest, the only part of the festival we spent any time at (the rest was spent at the nearly empty Senbon Beach) - was the fireworks over the Kanogawa river. We met up with Yuka and Satoshi to watch from the banks of the river:



above: oooooh


After the fireworks, we walked back down to the Numazu Port for beers at the Taproom, which quickly filled with more festival-goers. From there, we rescued our bikes from Byo-in (we'd had to abandon them in order to hop a taxi and meet up with Yuka and Satoshi on time) and rode back through now-empty streets.  

Teiko in Numazu!


Two weeks ago, my friend Teiko came to Numazu for a visit! I was so excited to show her around - our first stop was the Numazu Port (with the obligatory stop at the Byo-in typhoon gate, above) and then a long walk along my favorite place in Numazu, Senbon Beach:


One of the two rock-art Mt.Fujis had seen a little remodeling during the recent World Cup, and now includes a dragon flanked by "SAMURI BLUE!!" That's Teiko at the peak of the mountain, to give you a feel for the scale... 


Above: Teiko still remembers Maggie's softball pitching lessons! Iain found an abandoned plastic baseball set on the beach which, once he picked up, he felt guilty chucking back on the shore and so carried dutifully with him for the next five hours or so, till we managed to find a trash can. 

It was awesome to see Teiko and to get to show her around our home for the year. As luck would have it, she also happened to be visiting on the night of the Numazu festival, so, more photos to come ... 

early morning at the port


Early morning at the Numazu fish market.




a year since China!

Above: Iain's gross abuse of power - check out the students named after the Beatles and Star Wars. 

We realized the other day with some horror that it's been a year since we went to China! This time last year, we were just winding down the second camp we'd worked at. Although we were only in China for about six weeks - four of which were spent teaching - it somehow looms larger in our minds. Possibly because it was the weirdest job either of us had ever had, in which we were given an un-aircondioned roomful of hyper children and very little else, were herded around by a lanky chain-smoking hard-drinking 'handler' who was our only connection to our employers and who spoke about three words of English (though a conspiracy theory that Mr. Li actually spoke perfect English but faked it to avoid having to dealing with us any more than he already did was floated about towards the end) and lived, worked and ate with THE WEIRDEST TEACHERS either of us had ever or met or have encountered since. We had an epic poker tournament, we snuck into private apartment pool at midnight (thank you again, Mr. Li), Iain invented an elaborate playground game involving hula hoops, we braved strange and harrowing bathrooms. It rocked. 


above: more peace signs than you know what to do with.


I meant to post this a year ago, but here goes anyhow: on my last day at the first school, Lin (the little girl at the left end wearing a uniform) presented me with a painstakingly hand-written Chinese lesson. As you can see from the scan, it's on cheap thin paper with a class activity on the back, but I carry it with me  in my journal wherever I go now. It's quite possibly the sweetest thing any student has ever given me. So  here it is - in case you ever needed to say "apple" in Chinese. Thanks, Lin! 

farmland




above: xe om driver + scarecrow = awesome.

I have a legitimate excuse for having been an internet flake for the last week: thanks to some confusion about whether spelling my name ミッカ  トクダーホル is just as legitimate as spelling it in its non-katakana incarnation, the internet bill did not get paid and we were cut off from the non-Numazu world for a week. It was harrowing! Though, on the plus side, much more talking, reading, cleaning, knitting, studying and cooking was accomplished than otherwise is. Anyway, the internet came back this morning - I was woken up by the ping of my ipod being hit with a week's worth of unacknowledged mail - and so now I can resume my usual pattern of being a normal flake. 


In other news, the morning drive to work has become crazy beautiful.






So anyway, more over the next few days, hopefully, about Teiko's visit and the Numazu festival and the fact that it has become bleakly, oppressively hot - like, surface of the sun hot. Also, we're going on vacation soon, so, hooray! 

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