31 August 2004
The idea of a cool expensive pen is growing on me. I've spent a good deal of time browsing the "Arrow-International" site below. I'm looking at 14,000 yen ones though, not 140,000 yen. Last night we had some tremendous rain and wind from typhoon 16. I loved every minute of it. I got drenched in the 11 seconds it took me to take down a hanging plant on our veranda. I haven't been to the garden yet, but I'll check it out in the morning. I suppose there's some damage to my climbing trellis and my goya, but that's exciting too. "The Jerk" DVD is two days late. Why can't I remember to take that back?30 August 2004
Back from Tokushima. It was a really easy and fun trip. The rain and typhoon winds never came. We met Kumiko's folks at the bus terminal in Osaka and had an easy ride to Tokushima Station, where our hotel was. We crossed two beautiful suspension bridges along the way. The timing was nice too. Once we arrived we had about 2 hours to relax and get ready for the reception. Kumiko and I went down to the shopping street below, which is really old and crummy, but interesting for what it is. We went into an interesting-looking pen store. The owner was anxious to show us his collection and explain everything in detail. He had some expensive pens in there. The one I wanted cost 190,000 yen ($1900). I decided to wait until the price comes down. The guy was really nice though and obviously just loved to talk to people. I recommend his shop to anyone nutty enough to buy a two thousand dollar pen. On to the wedding/reception, which was what it turned out to be. We'd thought it was only a reception, but before dinner, the couple restated their vows in a sort of mini-ceremony, which was nice. We sat at a table with many of Kumiko's elementary school softball teammates. Also at our table was a really nice couple who, like me, didn't know anyone else at the table -- one of Eriko's college friends, Asako, and her husband Yoshiaki. I really enjoyed their company, and talked to them in English for most of the dinner, while Kumiko talked to her old friends in Japanese. They live in Tokyo, but I'm hoping we can become friends. The dinner just kept coming and coming, course after course. At one point they brought out some gelato, which I thought marked the end of it all. That wasn't so. The gelato was inexplicably followed by two small slices of ham, and then some fruit. We were all stuffed to the gills, when two hours later we met in the hotel lobby for the "second party". Only the younger guests were part of this party at an an izakaya down the street. Here we had another multi-course dinner. Yoshiaki and Asako went to this party as well, and Kumiko got to know them better here. We also talked to some of the American (Ohioan) friends, who were also really nice. They did an admirable job dealing with the barrage of strange new foods. They made me proud. I hate it when people refuse to try unfamiliar foods. The next day (yesterday) we had breakfast with basically the same group of people at the hotel buffet. Then Kumiko and I went off to explore Tokushima a bit. We took a suspended cable car to the top of Bizan, which is Tokushima City's famous mountain. There's a park and several observation points up there. We decided to hike down afterwards, which was not strenuous, but it was a long walk and we got pretty hot and tired. We sang a medley of B52s songs, school anthems and marching tunes on the way down. Eventually we made it back to the hotel, where we rested and cooled down before meeting up with our friends Ikumi and Noboru. Noboru is a ramen noodle maniac and expert and a genuine nut as well. We went first to Takahashi Chukasoba, where we ate on our first visit. It's a little shack of a place out in the suburbs, and they serve some first class Tokushima ramen. Kumiko and Ikumi each had a "medium meat", while Noboru and I had the "large meat". It was big and cheap, but I wanted more. We stopped for a few minutes at their new house, which is beautiful, and there made the decision to go to another ramen shop. It was also tiny and great. This one was Ikumi's favorite shop, "Hachiman", hidden in the midst of a suburban neighborhood. It seems to have a mystical, elusive appeal to them because of it's odd location, and the fact that it's been closed more often than not when they've tried to eat there. We were lucky. The noodle gods were with us that day, and our faith was rewarded by a fine bowl of ramen. As I mentioned before, Noboru is just crazy, and the whole trip was punctuated by a series of bizarre facial contortions and noises. In the car we all competed to shout "wakatta!" (I understand.) in the most samurai-esque way. We had to delay our departure time to fit in the second ramen shop, but it was worth it. We had coffee at the hotel before saying goodbye. On the bus ride home we passed a used car lot called "Ultra Potato".27 August 2004
We're off to Tokushima tomorrow for a wedding -- one of Kumiko's junior highschool friends, Eriko, is marrying a guy from the U.S., Marty. They live in Indiana now. I'm looking forward to meeting them, and to returning to Tokushima. I've been a Tokushima lover since we took a short trip there two summers ago and met up with another friend, Ikumi, and her husband Noboru. Tokushima is famous for a festival in August called "awa odori". We experienced the festival during that first trip, and I was very impressed...moved even, by the music and atmosphere. We also ate Tokushima-style ramen, which is excellent. Tokushima style mixes the two typical options of shoyu (soy sauce) or tonkotsu-based (pork bone) soup, and substitutes buta bara niku (a cut of pork) for chashu (a different cut of pork). There is also typically a raw egg floating on top. It's a great ramen style. Tomorrow's Tokushima trip is going to be something of a challenge, as typhoon number 16 is closing in and expected to drop 200 millimeters of rain on Tokushima and Kochi. We'll have fun anyway.24 August 2004
Back to work in a few minutes. It's 12:07, so I should be dressed and groomed, but of course I'm not. Just have to do it fast. We watched two episodes of The Avengers last night. One of them, "The Danger Makers", I would classify as a top ten episode. Military men who were addicted to danger were being used by a military psychologist to commit crimes. Great premise. New sidebar pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them. Got to go...22 August 2004
The tomatoes have been uprooted, the turnip seeds are in the ground, and I've learned how to copy DVDs. I'm recording an Utada Hikaru video as I write. In a few minutes, Glenn and I are heading into Umeda to meet some friends at one of our former haunts, Isaribi. On the menu tonight: dried squid tempura, fried potato, fried cheese, fried octopus, fried chicken, some form of weiners, sashimi, corn, big grilled fish, and more!19 August 2004
THERE ARE ONLY 3 OLYMPIC SPORTS. This according to Japanese television broadcasters, who would much rather replay endlessly Japanese victories in judo, gymnastics and swimming than show any of the other sports even once. I'm getting frustrated. As long as I'm "goin' off" on TV, here's a quote from the NHK News English translation "It's been 1 year since the bombing of the UN building in Iraq: 1 year since the attack on the UN building. We go to NHK reporter Keiji Imai in Baghdad: Keiji, it's been 1 year since the bombing of the UN buliding in Iraq...". It's like that with every story - an excercise in repetition and paraphrase. I'm finished now. One other sport that I did enjoy watching the Japanese compete in was table tennis. There's a young athlete named Fukuda Ai, "Ai-chan", who is known by every Japanese person. She's famous because she's been competing on television since she was five years old, and when she would lose she used to cry like mad. Now she's fun to watch because she's so animated. She's 15 now. Every point she scores is celebrated either vocally, "TAA!!", or with exaggerated gestures. We watched her play the American, Gao Jun (23), who seemed a polar opposite. We felt it must be really annoying to play against a little kid who says "SAA! or TAA!" after every point. I couldn't help but cheer for Ai-chan though. She's a funny little thing. I learned last night from my Tasmanian friend Patrick, that Australia's top player is Miao Miao, which I think is just a really cool name, honestly. It sounds at once cute and sexy, like Catwoman. Like Gao Jun, she used to play for the Chinese national team. I want to see a Miao Miao match. I might name my daughter "Quack Quack" or "Squeak Squeak". I made it to the garden this morning after a three-day absence due to rain and early shifts. There were cucumbers a'plenty and okra too (four of each). Not enough to make Bindi Masala yet, but these are giant-sized okra pods. I think I can start cooking okra in earnest once all five of my plants are producing. The youngest two haven't gotten there yet. Still, I wish I had planted two more. I think it's time to put the turnips in for an autumn harvest. I'll plant them on Sunday if all goes according to plan.18 August 2004
Pardon my progress. I've just had a 3-day weekend, in which I accomplished little. Now I just want another three days off, and I promise I'll do heaps of useful stuff. No dice, I have to go to work this morning. I got my fireworks pictures back the other day and they look good. As I easily predicted (and caused), too much repetition of the same shot, but a few of them are really nice, and I can't wait to try again. I'm tempted to post the photos now, but I think I'll wait until I've had one more chance to take some different angles. My last chance, actually, will be on the 21st at the Inagawa festival in Ikeda City. I have to work that day, but it's an early shift, and I'll be happy to drag my camera to the office and race over to Ikeda station. Just hoping for clear skies. The dry summer is coming to an end, and typhoon season will start soon. We had buckets of rain from a big, non-typhoon-related thunderstorm last night, but today looks like a beauty. On Sunday we were lucky, because rain had been predicted, but it ended up being a rather cool overcast day, which was perfect for the "sayonara" barbeque we had for one of my coworkers, Grant. He's going off to England, where his wife is waiting, and everyone speaks the same language ("football this and football that") as he does. We had this one at Shukugawa riverside park in Nishinomiya. It was a big noisy drunken party and I can't believe the police didn't come. If I was one of the Shukugawa parkside residents, I would have called the cops for sure. I would also be rich. That's a nice area. I'd probably drive an immaculately restored 1965 Peugeot 404 sedan, and I wouldn't have to go to work in an hour.12 August 2004
After work today, I met Kumiko at Sone Station and we drove up to northern Kawanishi to watch for meteors. Last night was the peak of the annual Perseids meteor shower, but there are always stragglers for a couple of nights after. We saw perhaps 8 shooting stars between us. I don't think I succeeded in capturing any on film. I was making 30-second exposures hoping to get lucky, but the sky wasn't really dark enough for that to work well. I think I'll just get some washed out frames of boring sky and trees. I saw a picture on the Sky&Telescope site that inspired me. I'll try again some day when I'm in a dark place, like the Big Bend.10 August 2004
Tomorrow (the 11th) is Kumiko's birthday. We won't have a chance to go out, because I'll be working late, but she's going to meet her good friends Ueda-chan and Keichi. I don't know why Keichi is just Keichi and Ueda gets a "chan". That's just the way it is. Kumiko and I will celebrate next weekend instead. Tonight we watched a really nice documentary about an old woman in Ishikawa who still holds to the traditional way of catching awabi (abalone) and sazae (a type of edible sea snail). She dives in the sea 4 to 8 meters without an air tank or hose and pries them from the rocks below. She's 71 years old and she's training an 18-year-old girl in the same profession. On the Pacific coast, girls use the same method to harvest pearls. I first read about it in Yukio Mishima's novel "The Sound of Waves", when I was in college. That was a nice romantic story about a young fisherman who falls in love with one of the girls who dives for pearls. I'm surprised that it came from Mishima, because most of his other works include gory scenes about ritual suicide, or just abject misery. Now that I've had some experience over here, I should probably go back and reread some of the novels I read in college. There was a time when I read Japanese novels exclusively. Then I got tired of the misery. Anyway, this old woman diver was really spry and cute and kind of inspirational to my (overly)romantic views of the way things used to be. Coming back to the present, Kumiko realized today that Glenn and Chiemi have taken her mobile phone charger to Fukui and left their own here. Has technology merely complicated our lives? Obfuscated our ties to the natural world? I'll consider the question right after I've posted this to my website and cranked up the a/c. I can record The Osbournes at the same time.9 August 2004
Glenn and Chiemi cleared out this afternoon. They're heading up to visit Chiemi's parent's in Fukui prefecture. We really enjoyed having them here. Erika was much cuter than she was troublesome, and Glenn and Chiemi haven't changed since we last saw them (actually only 11 months ago). We said goodbye to them at Sone station and then came back and cleaned up and took the baby bed and highchair and extra bedding back to Kumiko's parents' place. We had a nice lunch/snack and beer with them to finish off a hard, hot job (lots of bicycling and stair-climbing). I'm pretty amazed at the quality of food they can produce from their refrigerator on a whim. Kumiko and I fell asleep on their sofa after lunch. In a few minutes we're going to go out for sushi in Shonai. It's cheap and good.Last night I finally realized my dream of taking somewhat serious fireworks pictures. I dragged my heavy tripod and lots of slide film out to Ibaraki City for their annual festival. It was really a wonderful festival. I went 3 years ago, but the conditions weren't as good as they were last night. I arrived early to stake out a good tripod spot. I settled on a strip of grass behind some of the food vendors stands for two reasons: 1) I didn't have to leave my tripod behind or risk losing my spot to enjoy food and drink. 2) I wanted a different view from all the other old dudes who were there to take pictures. There were plenty of photographers there of course, but they all went to the same spot, which is a good vantage point no doubt, but they're all going to end up with the same photos. I ended up taking a lot of short videos with my digital camera as well. I think they turned out rather good, so when my slides come back, I'll put up a special fireworks page. That is, if they come back looking okay. I just did what the guides say to do: use ASA100 slide film, set to f8 or 11 and hold the shutter open for 1 to 6 seconds. I started at f16 when the sky was still pretty blue, and then switched to f11 when it got darker. I went through 4 rolls without moving my camera, so I should end up with a lot of the same, but hopefully some good ones. I tried one roll of tungsten balanced film as an experiment. It'll be about a week before I get anything back from the lab.
By the way, thanks to Barry and Marga for the CD and the bindi masala mix. My okra is just starting to flower.
6 August 2004
We had a great day today. I had the day off work due to a shift-swap. I woke up around 9 and went to water the garden, pick two cukes and several tomatoes, and tie up some vines. When I came back, Glenn and I made a quick exit down to Umeda for some electronics and toys shopping. We had lunch at Yoshinoya too. After a few hours, Kumiko and Chiemi came down with Erika and we all looked around the toy section at Yodobshi Camera for a few minutes. Glenn and I checked out some cool video games, realistic model gun kits, Transformers® stuff, and remote-controlled Thunderbirds® vehicles. Chiemi and Kumiko humored us for a few minutes, then we went our separate ways. Kumiko and I headed off to Kobe for the museum exhibition we've been wanting to see -- China Dreams. It was a really entertaining exhibit. I typically don't care for art exhibitions, but this one was great. The highlights were Chinese 20th century advertising art and propaganda posters. I bought a book with facsimiles of all the pieces in the show. I'm going to try scanning some into the computer so I can make custom prints. We bought a poster and some postcards as well. The Hyogo Prefectural Museum is fantastic. It's the second Takao Ando (architect) museum we've been to. The first was in Fort Worth, Texas, and the similarities are very apparent. It's interesting to see a really complex structure like that and consider how anyone ever put it all together. I wonder if he had every aspect of it - service stairwells, doors, elevators, closets, alcoves, power outlets, etc. - absolutely planned on paper, or if some of the finer points only come to light as the basic structure goes up. You'd really have to have an exceptional mind to design buildings. You'd have to think in 3-D on a grand scale. I've never considered that before. We took the Hanshin train there and back to Umeda, which is a novelty for us. We rarely have occasion to take that line. We passed some areas I'd like to explore, around Sumiyoshi station and another I've forgotten. Eventually we met up with Glenn and Chiemi again, who had spent the day shopping in Umeda, and we all went to dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Hep Five entertainment building. The food was excellent, I thought, a cut above the typical Japanese Italian restaurant, which is already very good. Erika wasn't in the mood to sit still though, so the amount of time at the table with all five of us present was very small. For most of the meal, Glenn or Chiemi was off with Erika, just walking around. She was an angel on the way home though. She's going to bed now.2 August 2004
A moment to relax. Glenn, Chiemi and Erika are here now and lots of fun. Actually, they're out shopping now, but having a baby seems to place severe restrictions on getting out of the house. Kumiko and I woke up around 9 this morning, which is late for me, and I went into Osaka to the immigration office. I had to get my work visa and re-entry permit moved over to my new passport. It was an easy process, but a long wait. They did it for free though, so I was happy. While I was waiting I tried to help a Chinese girl who was applying for something. She was holding onto a sheaf of papers which should have been placed in a box on the counter. Since I can't remember anything more than "How are you" and "My name is" in Mandarin, I tried English, of which she had no idea, then Japanese. When I spoke Japanese, she said "I can't speak English". Anyway, I couldn't remember the Japanese word for "put", so I was useless either way. Moments like that bring home how little I've progressed. Eventually I just took her papers and put them where they belonged. Turns out language wasn't necessary. After I finished I went back to Umeda to meet Kumiko. We got on a train to Sannomiya (Kobe), because we wanted to try out a grocery store that my friend Tammie recommended -- Kobe Grocers. They have dry beans in quantity for a reasonable price (about three times the price you'd pay in America), which is something I'd never been able to find in Japan. I bought black-eyed peas, kidney beans and garbanzo beans. We also ate lunch (ramen) in Sannomiya. The shop was having a special on gyoza; they were free when you bought ramen. Pretty good special. After the grocery store, we went to two department stores in Sannomiya: Marui to meet Kumiko's friend (who works in men's shoes, but wasn't there), and Sogo to buy dessert for tonight. Oh and before we did any of that we started for the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art to see an exhibition of 20th century Chinese advertising art, which looks great, but a train guy told us the museum closes on Mondays, so we had to nix that idea. We finally made it home around 4:20, and Glenn and Chiemi were still here. They hadn't left the house except to buy lunch from Family Mart, despite having shopping plans in Umeda. They changed their shopping destination to Daiei in Sone (our station), and should be back soon to head over to Kumiko's parents' house for a fabulous dinner. I'm looking forward to seeing Erika turn another house inside out. When she first arrived here, she opened every drawer she could reach and emptied every shelf she could and pushed every button she saw. She can't help herself. She's just got to know.
