Wandering Musings

Ah, Hokkaido. Lovely place… at least the small portion I saw. Akita may be far from many things, but at least it’s relatively close to Hokkaido. The plane took only 35 minutes to get to the Sapporo Chitose airport. There I met up with Suzanne and we set off to explore Sapporo. Our hotel was only a few minutes from the station, in the heart of the city.

Before I left, I asked my students what they recommended doing in Hokkaido. Almost every recommendation involved eating food of some sort. So… that’s what Suzanne and I did. Of the things we ate, those Hokkaido is famous for include butter and corn ramen, miso ramen, seafood (excellent sushi), crab (I tried some of Suzanne’s crab sashimi… that’s raw crab – not the brains this time, a leg… but it was still gross) and Genghis Khan. It was all delicious, save for the crab sashimi.

I took a ton of pictures, so I’ll upload them over several posts. These were taken our first day in Sapporo – September 23rd.

Sapporo has a sort of Londonesque Eye. For 700 yen you can spend about 5 minutes in a giant ferris wheel over the city. The sun was at a horrible angle when we went, so the pictures aren’t the greatest. But you can at least get an idea of what the city looks like.

One of the main streets. Personally, I don’t think there are nearly enough advertisements.

Akarenga, or ‘Red Bricks,’ the Old Hokkaido Government Building. Originally built in 1888, it was one of Japan’s largest and tallest buildings; it was rebuilt in 1911 after a devastating fire. Brick buildings are rare in Japan. This one has 2.5 million of them. Another interesting fact: the octagonal dome design was borrowed from the Massachusetts State House.

A fountain in the popular Odori Park located in the city center.

Suzanne and I having way too much fun with various bears around the city. Bears and foxes are Hokkaido’s most common mascots.

A small shrine adjacent to a crowded shopping strip.

More fountains in Odori Park.

The enormous TV Tower stands at the park’s edge. You can take an elevator to the top viewing deck (for a price), but Suzanne and I were still feeling a bit ripped off from the ‘Eye’ earlier that day, so we passed.

Thus ends day one. We concluded the day watching crazy Japanese game shows in our hotel room. It was fantastic. More pics to come. Day two was even better!

This weekend was FANTASTIC. Hokkaido was amazing, the weather was absolutely perfect, the food was delicious… Suzanne and I had a wonderful time. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. Pictures will be up soon. Until then, enjoy this little ray of sunlight. This was the view from my flight into Akita. I was sitting over the wing….. I always get stuck over the wing. Oh well. Enjoy! More to come.

What a week! Work was less hectic, this being a counselling week (fewer classes), but I’ve been busy nonetheless. Yesterday was kids followup training, so I caught the early morning shinkansen to Tokyo and somehow managed to find the head office without getting completely lost (I even caught the subway! I have to say, I was quite proud of myself). I arrived at 12:00 precisely, right when training began. In the US, this wouldn’t be considered late, but in Japan I was a good 15 minutes tardy. The trainers didn’t mind though. They knew I’d had close to a five hour commute there, and appreciated that I’d come. The training itself was pretty pointless, since the information I needed most (Q&A on classroom management and teaching tips) was the one section I missed because I had to leave early in order to catch the last shinkansen back to Akita (another five hour trip). It was a long day. BUT I really enjoyed seeing everyone from Omiya training. I didn’t realize how much I missed them, which just made it that much more difficult to say goodbye again, especially this time, knowing I won’t see most of them again. Or at least not for a long while.

Well, it’s been two weeks since I left for Sendai. About time I post some pictures! Sendai is a fairly large city; its population is over 1 million. The bus from Akita takes about three hours. Not bad. Like driving between Vancouver and Seattle (a drive I’ve made many many times). There, I met up with Suzanne and several teachers from her Fukushima school. One of her co-workers used to live in Sendai, so she gave us tips on what to see and do (and even got Suzanne and I an amazing deal at an incredibly ritzy hotel downtown – we paid little more than we would have staying at a hostel. Sweet!). We had Sunday afternoon and then most of Monday to explore the city (though it rained all day Monday and we both felt a bit sick… still had fun though). Show don’t tell – that’s the motto at Aeon, so I might as well stick to it. Here are some pictures from my Sendai weekend.

Suzanne and I. Our group ate lunch at a fantastic sushi restaurant in the train station. Yes, I ate everything on my plate (except the red fish eggs… not a fan).

Ichibancho – an enormous shopping strip stretching… I don’t know how far… blocks and blocks through the center of the city.

We entered an interesting shop only to discover an old shrine hidden in the back. I’m sure the shrine was there long before Ichibancho.

Cool decoration on the upper level. Perhaps more than decoration… an organ?

…Why? If you’ve ever seen my dog, you’ll understand why I took this photo. Suzanne and I went in and were immediately adopted by the CUTEST puppy I’ve ever seen (besides my own, that is). The owner even let us hold her (after spraying our hands with disinfectant). Aw, it was love at first sight.

Sunday night downtown. This is when the rain began, but it didn’t slow us down. Whoever left their laundry outside to dry was going to be sorely disappointed. Who leaves their laundry out on a downtown thoroughfare anyway?

So beautiful. And delicious. Don’t ask me what was in it.

A cemetery outside Zuihoden, the mausoleum of Date Masamune, the first feudal lord of Sendai. If you look closely you can see a ghost’s reflection in the last picture. I believe it has red hair, but I may be mistaken.

The long climb up to the mausoleum. Keep in mind this was on Monday, when Suzanne and I weren’t feeling the greatest. (If you saw that gorgeous drink… you can guess why.)

Almost there…

THIS made the climb worth it. This is Zuihoden. The original was constructed in the Japanese architectural style Momoyama following Date Masamune’s death in 1636. It was designated a national treasure in 1931, but was burnt to the ground (along with most of Sendai) after a massive 1945 B-29 air-raid. What you see above was rebuilt in 1979.

The grounds surrounding Zuihoden (and the other lesser mausoleums of various historical figures). Though raining, it was still beautiful. At one point we were caught in a whirlwind of falling leaves. It was a very Zen moment, like something out of Crouching Tiger. I almost expected to see shadowy figures racing through the forest canopy.

And that’s it. Sorry if you were expecting something a little more grand. I’m leaving tomorrow for Sapporo, Hokkaido (Japan’s northern island), so keep checking back. I’ll be posting more photos… soon. Thanks for reading!

Little did I know, while enjoying the sunshine in Senshu Park yesterday, the winds whipping my hair this way and that were actually faint ripples from a typhoon battering southwest Japan. Typhoon Shanshan. For the most part, it has passed Japan and is churning up the sea to the west, but the wind is still fierce here in Akita. Even though Shanshan is only a tropical storm at the moment (winds 39-73 mph), it’s a little eerie, the howling outside my window.

Click here to read more about Shanshan.

I’ve been in Japan now for one month exactly. It’s a little hard to believe. Akita is growing on me now, though I’m a little nervous about winter. I got a flyer in the mail with illustrations on what to do if your house is snowed under – completely snowed under. Apparently snows here (in the city) can reach 5 meters (that’s 15 ft!). That won’t be for a few months, though. The leaves haven’t even started changing colors yet.

So, yes, Sendai pictures will be up soon. But first, I have some pictures from today. I had planned on staying in and working on my lessons, but today was the first brilliantly sunny day I’ve seen since arriving in Akita. So instead, I took a walk to Senshu Park. It’s an old castle site in the middle of the city, but you wouldn’t know it. The castle is gone, but the grounds are beautiful. Here are some pictures so you can see for yourself.

Oga lotus flowers, grown from 2000 year old seeds apparently, litter the ‘moat’ and decorative lakes.

An enormous gateway leading into the park’s center.

The view from the top. I was shocked to discover Akita City is surrounded by so much green. It was so windy today I was nearly blown off this lookout hill.

A detailed look of Osumiyagura watchtower.

Yoshiaki Satake, the twelfth lord of the city, ruled during the 16th century.

 The sights of Senshu.

A shinto shrine hidden away within the park.

I like dragonflies. The first was on my balcony railing. The second landed beside me at the park.

Tonight’s sunset, viewed from my balcony.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where I’m headed in life. What’s after Japan? (Africa) Am I ever going to settle down? (Doubt it) Will I ever find someone to share the journey with? (???) That should actually be ‘with whom to share the journey.’ Yay for grammar. I’ve always felt behind, somehow, like I’m not where I should be. I know terms like ‘headed,’ ‘behind’ and ’should’ don’t apply when talking about life, and yet, we use them all the time. I was listening to Alan Watts this afternoon. For those of you not familiar with the man, he was a philosopher/theologian in the 60s/70s. I was first introduced to his work in high school, but forgot about him until last year, when I ‘rediscovered’ his ideas, surprised to find that many of them had permeated my own beliefs and the way I see the world. Anyway, here is a quote from one of the talks he gave. It’s not exact (since I was typing it out while listening), but close enough.

“The Japanese have a word, yugen, and they describe yugen as watching wild geese fly and be hidden in the clouds, as watching a ship vanish behind a distant island, as wandering on and on in a great forest with no thought of return… It’s at that moment you’re a perfectly rational human being. You’ve learned purposelessness. All music is purposeless. Is music getting somewhere? If the aim of music, of a symphony, were to get to the final bar, the best conductor would be the one who got there fastest. See, dancing, when you dance, do you aim to arrive at a particular place on the floor? Is that the idea of dancing? The aim of dancing is to dance. It’s exactly the same with our life. We think life has a purpose…. To live I must have faith. I must trust myself to the totally unknown. I must trust myself to a nature which doesn’t have a boss. Because a boss is a system of mistrust. That is why Lao Tzu’s Tao loves and nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them.”

Purposelessness has such a negative connotation, but think how unhappy we would be if everything had to have purpose or meaning. This is one of the reasons I’m so drawn to science. The scientific process devises the how, but not why; through it we can see how everything in the universe is intrinsically interconnected, but not what we should make of such connections. In a world that craves certainty and Truth, science is not well suited (just ask the politicians). But I see certainty as a sort of stagnation, a lie. Really, there’s no such thing.

Well, I’m back in Akita once more. Sendai was awesome. I needed to get out and do a little sight-seeing, compose my thoughts, and step back from… myself, I guess. Back to work tomorrow, but I think my outlook has changed for the better. I’ll post pictures and stories this week, but right now I’m off to bed. For your enjoyment, here’s a little something… it’s a postcard I bought at one of the many monstrous department stores in Sendai.

In case you can’t read the bottom, it says:

full of message.
I have a lot of words to you. but I dared not tell you these words.
I’m gonna send it to your heart. everything is fine!

I came to Japan with an open mind. Of course I’d researched the culture – both sides, good and bad (and plenty in-between) – and what to expect, but didn’t dwell on any of it too long, wanting to form my own opinions when I got here. I’ve discovered that my greatest misconception has nothing to do with Japan, but with me. Being told I’d be paid for 30 work hours per week, I envisioned having more time than I knew what to do with – time to start writing again, to draw, read and TRAVEL. I imagined staring out my window and contemplating the meaning of life while rain lavished the adjacent rice paddy. I imagined asceticism and simplicity. In my desire to lead a simpler life I was a bit overeager, I guess, and failed to realize that Japan is just as, if not more, materialistic than the US, and that 30 paid work hours do not equal 30 working hours. I go in to work around noon and typically don’t get home until 10 PM. My ‘break’ hours are spent frantically preparing lessons. I went in early today to try and gain a foothold on my sanity, but instead, the manager asked me to give a private lesson. It was a conversational lesson (we talked about art mostly), so it didn’t require any preparation, but it pushed me even further into the chaotic whirlwind I can’t seem to escape. That’s not to say I’m not partially responsible for my own lack of time. (When have I ever used my time wisely?) Like now, for instance: I wanted to do some reading tonight, but instead I’m writing this post. By the way, this is my tenth post. (Ten is my lucky number.) Thank you for reading my ramblings.

I really do want to read a bit tonight, so I’ll wrap this up. Here are two pictures that represent the rift between my expectations of and the reality of Japan.

Japan imagined (courtesy of Webshots).

Japan realized (taken in Omiya).

With the passing of Steve Irwin, my mind has been wandering today. His death seems like some kind of joke, random and pointless. And yet, when is death not some kind of universal joke: every fear, worry, love, attachment that person carried – gone. You could say ‘what’s the point of it all?’ but I think that’s the wrong question to ask. What’s the right question? I’m not convinced there is one. A certain poem kept surfacing in my head today – People, by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (don’t ask me to pronounce that one, I haven’t a clue). It’s not the greatest poem out there, but the last line is particularly poignant.

No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private,
and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.

In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.

There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.

But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.

Steve Irwin, crazy croc hunter and avid conservationist, died yesterday from a stingray stab to the chest. He got a lot of flak for the things he did, but I’m not ashamed to admit I loved his show. I never made it up to his Australia Zoo while in Australia, and that’s something I now regret. My heart goes out to the people he left behind, especially his wife and two young children. He did so much for Australia and wildlife conservation, raising public awareness worldwide about important environmental issues. He was truly one of a kind and will never be replaced.

Click here for the CNN story.