Wandering Musings

The moon through the spiny fingers of a douglas fir. This picture was taken in my backyard in August, and yes, I’ve been waiting three months to post it. It’s got that Halloween feel, don’t you think?

Halloween isn’t anything special in Japan. Kids don’t even dress up, unless they’re enrolled in an English conversation school like Aeon. Last week we teachers had to dress up for all our kids classes. I was a witch with the typical pointy hat and a really cool bone/tooth necklace that for some reason fascinated all the kids. We had a special Halloween party for the kids on Sunday – lots of games, tricks and treats. Another teacher and I dressed up as ghosts for the ‘haunted house’ (…classroom). We tried scaring the kids but ended up becoming punching bags for the bratty ones. *grumble grumble* But overall it was fun.

Interesting tidbit – Halloween stretches back to the 5th century BC (well before the Catholic All Hallow’s Eve). In Ireland, October 31st was the last day of summer. According to the Celts, on this day, Samhain, the laws of space and time were suspended, allowing the worlds of the living and the dead to intermingle. Lost souls would wander, searching for able bodies to possess. To make themselves less desirable, villagers would extinguish the fires from their houses and then dress up and parade around the town being as destructive as possible to frighten the lost souls away.

With that in mind, keep an eye on your soul tonight. Happy haunting everyone!

I had follow-up training in Tokyo on Monday. I took the shinkansen a day early and hung out with some friends from my Omiya group. Over the course of the four hour train ride, I had plenty of time to ponder life here in Japan. It’s interesting how quickly the exotic becomes routine. For example, riding a bullet train. Two months ago I’d never set foot in one, but now the experience is nothing special… just one of those things to get you where you need to go. Yet, even when something loses that initial wow factor, there is always more to experience. Case in point, while riding one of the JR trains around Tokyo, someone jumped in front of the one we were on. In Japan, suicide doesn’t have quite the social stigma it does in the US, and ending it all in front of a speeding train is one of the common ways to do it here.

Well, I won’t dwell on that subject. I have some pictures from the weekend, the majority of which were taken during the train ride to Tokyo. The quality isn’t the greatest, but this gives you an idea of what the northern Honshu countryside looks like. The leaves are just starting to change around Akita, and the once seemingly endless fields of green rice stalks have been harvested and now lie bare. I’ll stop blabbing and let you see for yourself.

The last picture isn’t anything special. The shinkansen had stopped, waiting for another train to exit the tunnel burrowing through the mountains. I just liked the texture of the trees in the background.

A photo request – the famous Akita dog statue in Tokyo. It’s located near the station in the Shibuya district – the Time Square of Tokyo. If there’s something in Japan you’d like me to photograph, send me an e-mail or post a request. I won’t make any promises, but I’ll certainly try to oblige.

More sights around Shibuya. Way too many people for my tastes, but it was certainly a happening part of the city.

“Time is a companion who goes with us on a journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived. After all, we’re only mortal.” A cool sculpture in Yoyogi Park – a place with weekend markets, crazy costumes, sidewalk bands and fearless breakdancers… to name a few of the sights.

One of the ‘punk’ bands.

You can’t tell, but these are the breakdancers. I took this picture for the background. That oddly-shaped architecture is the gymnasium building from the 1964 Summer Olympics.

We had dessert at an overpriced cafe in Ginza, Tokyo’s upscale shopping, dining and entertainment district. Have you ever had a $10 cup of coffee? Me neither, but some of my friends did. (My mocha freeze was only $9.)

My first YouTube video! These are some of the breakdancers. Hope you enjoy!

Two posts in one day, after two weeks of nothing? Crazy!

Not really. Yesterday marked my two month anniversary in Japan. I can’t believe it’s only been two months. In some ways it feels much much longer, yet at the same time things are still new and foreign, like I just stepped off the plane.

So, funny story. Last Monday, around 9:30, I was woken by my doorbell/intercom buzzing. I always hate answering because there’s a very good chance I’ll have no idea what the person is saying. Not surprisingly, the man was speaking Japanese. A phrase I’ve found very useful: Gomenasai, Nihongo ga wakarimasen. I’m sorry, I don’t understand Japanese. This just made him speak slower. Like that helps! I figured out he was with the internet company. As with most apartments, you have to buzz people in from downstairs… a simple task, right? Not if you don’t know what the buttons on your intercom mean. I pushed one, and suddenly a very loud alarm started ringing throughout my apartment. GREAT! I couldn’t make it stop, so I ended up pulling the button off the intercom. That stopped it. I changed quickly (meanwhile, the guy keeps buzzing my apartment) and opened my door to run down and let him in. Someone else had already let him in because he was right there, standing outside my door. All right. So he came in and I showed him where the phone port is. He pulled out his cell and started talking to someone while tinkering with the outlet. So THEN someone else buzzed my intercom. He said a whole string of something. I apologized and used my useful phrase again, but he didn’t even bother to slow his speech. So I opened the door to go downstairs again, but again, this man was standing right outside my door. With absolutely no idea what he was saying, I just kept apologizing. Of course it had something to do with the alarm I had pressed, but how do you explain it was just an accident using gestures alone? Then the internet guy joined the ‘conversation’ and it got a little awkward. I’m sure the maintanence guy thought I was being attacked or something. He and the internet guy talked, and, I guess, worked everything out. The internet guy had me sign a few papers and that was that.

It all worked out… and makes for a pretty entertaining story at least. And hey, now I know what one more button does. I’ll have to add it to the list.

It’s been a while since my last post. October and November are the busiest months at Aeon, I’ve been told. I certainly don’t disagree! So forgive me if my posts are lacking over the coming weeks. I do have some pictures for you. Not many, but these constitute the final day of my Hokkaido trip. Suzanne and I had a few hours to wander around Sapporo before catching the train to the airport.

The famous clocktower, Tokeidai, in Sapporo. I didn’t have high expectations, since I’d read it’s nothing spectacular. But it was very quaint, and an icon of the city – one of those things you have to see while there, just to say you’ve seen it.

A slightly disorienting angle, but it was a difficult building to photograph. From afar, it looked like a gigantic television screen displaying a shimmery underwater scene. Up close, you could see that the outer face was actually composed of thousands of various shaded blue tiles swaying in the breeze. Very cool.

Another brightly colored building.

Sapporo’s eki (train station) in the hub of the city, and a close-up of the clock. I don’t particularly have a thing for clocks… Sapporo just happens to have quite a few of them.

Preparing to depart. I got in trouble for taking these pictures – no electronic equipment allowed during takeoff. Nevermind that we weren’t actually moving yet, and that digital cameras don’t emit electrical signals, but… there’s wisdom in knowing when to pick your battles.

…There’s also wisdom in knowing when to be sneaky. These I did snap during takeoff. Sorry about the poor quality. The sun was at a horrible angle. That large mountain, I believe, is Mt. Yotei, one of the 100 most famous mountains of Japan.

And that’s it. Hokkaido was beautiful, and definitely worth visiting. Perhaps I’ll return to see the famous snow festival this winter. Although come winter I’ll most likely be sick of snow and ready to jet off to Okinawa, Japan’s southernmost island, for a tropical getaway. Stay tuned…

…I feel the sky tumbling down, tumbling down! Thank you, Carol King. The earthquake simulator at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) plays that song, so it has become my earthquake theme music. On October 2nd at 2:09 AM I felt my first earthquake in Japan. I was about to go to sleep when I realized that I was shaking. It wasn’t much, so I thought maybe I was half asleep already, but when I looked at my curtains they were all swaying back and forth (synchronously, and there was no wind). Eagerly I jumped out of bed and dashed to my balcony door (smart thinking… a doorway, right? Wrong, it’s almost entirely glass. All those old earthquake drills wasted…). The glass didn’t shatter, though. In fact, nothing happened. By the time I looked outside, the earthquake had stopped. Total quake time was ten, fifteen seconds max. Short and mild, but still, I was excited.

No earthquakes last night, although I did wake up several times in the middle of an English class. Each time I was sitting up, convinced I was teaching several students, but in my hazy dreamstate I couldn’t remember what the teaching point was and I had no materials. I sat there staring at the clock in confusion (‘wait… why does it say 3:17 am??‘), hoping my students wouldn’t mind the silence. This happened not once, but several times. It was really weird, to say the least. Luckily, my real classes today went much better. Work may be stressful, but I love teaching English. A note to everyone reading this, October 5th is World Teachers’ Day. Just so you know.

As cool as Sapporo was, we decided to branch out a bit. Suzanne’s students had mentioned Otaru was worth visiting for the excellent seafood (again, food-centered recommendations), so Sunday morning we hopped on a train and 40 minutes later found ourselves in the coastal town of Otaru. There are many images to follow, so make yourself comfortable.

A cool building near the train station. The sign says ‘Surira (?) Karaoke.’ I’m not sure what a bat/gargoyle has to do with music, but I like it nonetheless.

A small seafood market and souvenir center. I don’t know if they sold whale meat here or not, but here’s an interesting factoid about Japan’s whaling industry (courtesy Wikipedia): In 2005 Japan announced that they would significantly expand their whaling. With the adoption of this plan, Japan’s lethal take will include 100 sei whales, 10 sperm whales, 50 humpback whales, 50 fin whales, and 50 Bryde’s whales, all of which are endangered, along with 1,155 minke whales.

A mask shop, obviously. I don’t know if there’s a huge demand for masks, but they were quite beautiful. Classical music reverberated from the shop’s loudspeakers, and I found myself suddenly wanting to attend a masquerade ball. In the end, I bought a really cool spirally ring.

Believe it or not, we didn’t have any beer, Sapporo brand or otherwise, while in Hokkaido. And where was the horse that goes with this beer cart, you ask?

Here, taking a break. It looks so sad in the second pic, but really, it was quite friendly and enjoyed being patted.

The mascot character of a small gyoza joint where Suzanne and I ate. The woman in charge was Ainu, Hokkaido’s indigenous ethnic group. The restaurant was great. Everyone sat around the enormous hotplate where she grilled the gyoza (they’re like potstickers). It was very cozy. The woman next to me was so excited when she found out we spoke English and not Russian. Her son or grandson, about 7 or 8 years old, said he loved us and then was too embarrassed to look at us again. The locals were also extremely impressed with our chopstick ’skills.’

The famous canal that runs through the city.

A very interesting man and talented musician. It’s difficult to see, but his sign says ‘This is a gramophone violin’ in both English and Russian. He lived in California many many years ago studying street music and performance. Had he been selling CDs I would have bought one in a heartbeat.

Suzanne made fun of me for taking so many pictures of these boring glass fishing floats, but I was entranced. They often wash ashore along the Washington and Oregon coast. Otaru is famous for its glass blowing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the floats sold as souvenirs back home originated here.

Quite possibly the only tree in the country unfurling its fall foliage. I’m told the leaves don’t start changing until the end of October.

A different tree, a different perspective. I like the pattern and coloration of the bark.

One of Otaru’s many harbours and one of its many inhabitants.

Suzanne and I took a boat cruise along the coast. 2000 yen (less than $20) for over three hours! It was amazing.

It cracks me up. Japanese people love feeding seagulls from the boat. I think almost every picture I took on the tour has a seagull or two hovering within. Can you spot them all? It’s like Where’s Waldo… except not fun.

See, there’s one!

Japanese also seem to enjoy ferris wheels. The first picture is looking back at Otaru. The second is farther along the coast, near the Otaru aquarium. The boat stopped in the harbour, but apparently our tickets didn’t allow us to disembark. (The captain shook his head vehemently and motioned us back to our seats when we tried to follow people off.)

Local fishermen.

Not the most interesting picture, but the notches in the cliff remind me of a goofy face watching the birds and boats come and go with the tidal flow. Yeah, that was cheesy, but it felt like a rhyme was needed.

Boats, boats, and more boats sailing the big blue wet thing.

More gulls! This may look like a dramatic, artistic angle (or not), but really, I just lost my balance while snapping the shot. I mean… yeah, it was completely intentional.

The dramatic coastline.

I didn’t manipulate the colors – the water really was this beautiful. It looked almost tropical. There appears to be some sort of shrine built into the cliff here. I would have loved to do a bit of exploring.

Beware. There be pirates in these waters.

On our way back to Otaru. A lighthouse on a hill.

Back on shore, some flowers. (Just in case you couldn’t tell.)

And finally, a hilarious sign. It needs no explanation. However, if I saw someone with a cigarette as big as the guy’s in the third diagram, I wouldn’t hang around waiting for its smoke to hit my face!

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I certainly enjoyed taking them! Don’t be shy. If you like any of my photographs or have any questions, please leave a comment. I know you’re out there…. mwa ha ha.