30 June 2005, night Yesterday was very special. We went on a boat trip with Japan's most famous kabuki actor, Nakamura Kanzaburo. You haven't heard of him?! I hadn't either, but Kumiko is a big fan, and she entered a contest to go on this boat parade through downtown Osaka and won. I took a day off, and we both had to get duded up in yukatas. He's really famous. He actually took a kabuki troop to New York and had a very successful run. So this boat parade thing was a big deal, and hundreds of people gathered on every bridge and in all the windows and balconies we passed, and waved at us as we floated by. Pretty cool!
27 June 2005, night Hmmm. Gotta say something. Not much to say...Okay, I know: dinner. I had an excellent dinner tonight. Really top notch, first class cuisine. Chicken curry, made by my darling bride, and a simple, but elegant salad, which I prepared, of leaf lettuce, tomato wedges and a smattering of arugula/ruckola? Don't know exactly how to spell or what it is in English, but Kumiko says it's called "rukkora" in Japanese, and it tastes really good. The dressing was mayonnaisse, with cracked pepper and salt from the Austrian Alps. And finally, I served it up with a juicy, delicious 400ml can of Coke from the vending machine downstairs. And now, a new issue of "Black&White Photography" is waiting for me to untether it from its plastic mailing wrapper. I'll do that now.
24 June 2005, noon I have to stop buying cameras from Ebay. I got a tiny Olympus 35RC in the mail yesterday. This isn't the 35SP I mentioned before, but a cheaper, smaller, impulse purchase. It's would be a perfect size manual camera for carrying around in your briefcase, but the seller just neglected to list any of the glaring problems the camera has. Who doesn't want to be honest? How could you list a camera for auction, and not mention all of its defects? I've asked him for a refund, but no reply yet. We shall see. I just hope the 35SP guy has been honest about the condition. Tonight we're going to a Spanish restaurant with friends Miwa and Bubu. I really love reading Kerouac's "On the Road". It's so easy to get into. This is my first reading of it since highschool, and it's a completely different experience. I think a lot of right-wing types see Kerouac as a bad influence on youth, but this novel makes me love America, and love people. I think kids should read it. Another simpleton book review by Matt Melton, age 31.
From the archives: Dean Davis, Matt Melton, Anna Melton, circa 1977.23 June 2005, morning We finished watching David Attenborough's "Private Life of Plants" series. It's one of his shorter series (only 6 episodes), but has a lot of great time-lapse photography showing the way plants move. It's pretty amazing. Plants are scary in fast motion. They act like they're self-aware. I have another link that I think some people would find interesting. This man named Gene lives in Massachusetts. He buys old cameras with film still in them and develops the film. There are some really fascinating historical scenes and sequences in these old pictures. His latest, from an American WWII soldier's Argus-A, is one of the best.
This cat was just about to get really spooked and bolt away.19 June 2005, midnight Leftover borscht and Costco roast chicken tonight (last night). Better the second round. I enjoyed having money today on my day off. I won an internet auction for an Olympus SP in the morning. It will replace my defunct Yashica Lynx 5000 when it arrives from America. I can't put it on my special camera page until I have my hands on it, but I've taken the Yashica off. I found I had to update quite a few things on that page. I also added a links page, and I just put up a new photo album of pictures from around our neighborhood. Sounds like a highly computerized day, but I did manage to do some gardening as well. And cook chicken soup from the roast chicken carcass. Mmmm, carcass soup.
17 June 2005, evening We just finished up two hearty bowls of borscht which I made from our home-grown beets. I must say, it was an excellent Russian dinner, by me. I think it would have been better without beef though. I don't know how to cook tender beef. I haven't aquired the skill. It sure is some red red stuff. Based on previous borscht experiences, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens on the other end. I gave some beets to an old man at the garden who always helps us and gives us advice. Today he showed me the proper way to tie down an eggplant plant. Fascinating stuff. Oh, about Y's Road: it was closed. Don't know why. It's still there and all, but the door was locked. That was disappointing. We did have some good yakitori beforehand at least. Of all the fancy styles of yakitori, the basic minced balls are the best. They're called tsukune in Japanese. We're in the early stages of planning a tsukune hop - going from yakitori restaurant to yakitori restaurant, and just ordering a beer and two sticks of tsukune at each one. I think it's a pretty cool idea. Perhaps we can execute the plan when Mike comes to visit in August. I did some other work at the garden today too, besides tieing up nasu. I also improved the goya climbing trellis, planted more okra, and tore down the cucumber trellis, since the cucumbers were all doing nothing. I pulled them up, and turned over the soil, and tomorrow I'll buy a big bag of dirt and mix it in to that row to dilute whatever damage I did to it before. My father-in-law is going to take over that row. I'm not sure what he wants to plant, but hopefully he'll have more luck than I did. Right now in Treasure Island, our hero is floating on a goat-skin boat, and having trouble getting the boat back to shore. What's gonna happen next?
Door #1: Cool guys like me come here to buy plastic models.
Door #2: Come here to have your "Western-style" clothes tailored.13 June 2005, night Arrhh, drink up me hearties, and double grog for the lot of you! I'm reading Treasure Island now, and it sure is good, but I think Kidnapped is probably a better novel for the more mature reader. Last night there was a big sayonara party riverside at Shukugawa for Duncan and Alex and Katie, who are all wonderful folk. I'm so sorry to see them go. Influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson, I decided to drink hard liquor from the bottle, which suited me fine, until this morning when I realized I had an early Japanese lesson. It really should have been rum to keep the spirit of the pirates, but all they had in a small flask was Japanese whiskey. So it had to do. I don't drink very much anymore. We're going to go out to a club called Y's Road in Kobe tomorrow night. We used to go there monthly on "sessions night", and I would always sing a couple of songs with the rotating line-up of amateur jazz musicians. We haven't been in a long time, maybe two years, so I'm excited and a little nervous about going back. I'm not even sure they still have "sessions night" on 2nd Tuesdays. We shall see.
11 June 2005, night What a week! I worked at 5 different schools and wrote reports on 7 teachers. Now it's the end of my weekend. I have to start again tomorrow morning. Kumiko and I had the day off together on Friday, but nothing really to do. We went to the garden, and later went into Umeda, where I had a few errands. We had some excellent onigiri at a dedicated onigiri shop at Hankyu Umeda station.Onigiri are triangular "balls" of rice with some kind of filling trapped in the middle. I started out with takana, which is a kind of boiled and salted field green, then moved on to mentaiko, which is spicy cod roe (mixed with mayonaisse). Kumiko had some weird indescribable ones, including one with cheese. All were excellent. It was such a big hit with us that Kumiko went back and ate there today on her way to school. Last night I decided to go ahead with the Yashica repair, since I had all the supplies needed to finish it. I very carefully put the shutter and lens back together. It took ages to figure out where everything goes, but I finally succeeded. Then I started the tricky task of resoldering all the wires. Luckily I'd made a diagram of where they all went. That was painstaking work as well. After several false finishes and taking it back apart, I finally got it all in place to where I could test it. The winder just wound until the lever was out of room to move, and the shutter cocked, but would not fire. I took it apart again, and put it back together and it still wouldn't work. The next step was to carefully put the whole thing into a plastic grocery bag and deposit it into the garbage can. It's worth no more of my time and trouble. I suppose I'm in the market for a replacement 50s - 70s era rangefinder.
Farewell to the Yashica Lynx 5000. It did a nice job in New York City in May 2004.6 June 2005, night I worked at my old office in Toyonaka today. It was a nostalgia trip. Just like when I went back to my elementary school, everything looked smaller than I remembered. I went to my old convenience store, Daily Yamazaki, and my old lunch spot, Matsuya and I ate my old lunch, the gyuyakinikuteishoku. But the price went up! I'm still waiting for parts to fix my camera, and everyday I forget how to put it back together a little more. Here's what it looks like now:
Yashica Lynx 50005 June 2005, night I'm drinking chocolate soy milk, and I'm loving it. Kumiko picked up a case of it at Costco. Speaking of drinks, there's a new type of Coke out here called Coca-Cola Lemon. I've tried it, of course, just as I tried Vanilla Coke, C2, and in ancient history New Coke, and once again, the original retains the championship title. No improving on perfection. I put up another photo album, probably the smallest one on the site, because I only picked from one roll, recently shot in Kobe. I just liked this roll. It's expired (by 2 years) Kodak Ektachrome 200. This is perhaps the last of my 20 rolls I bought off Ebay for $37. That stuff costs $10/roll over here (fresh, of course).
A tree, a bicycle, an old man. What's the connection?4 June 2005, afternoon A lazy Saturday off. This is my first of many, since my schedule just went to Fri/Sat off rather than Sun/Mon. I'm trying to plan my friend Mike's, and maybe Jonathan's, trip to Japan. He's coming in August, so we'll be able to see fireworks and check out some other summer festivals along the way. Looks like we'll spend a bit of time in Nara, since he wants to see the giant Buddha, and we can probably catch a fireworks festival while we're there. Ahh, summer! I hate it and love it. I'll love it much more when Mike's here because I won't be wearing a tie and a long-sleeve shirt. Our garden is just not performing this year. I think I must have messed up the ph balance of the soil, or over fertilized or underfertilized or something, because it looks pathetic compared to every other plot. The turnips are the only thing going strong. It's shameful and I'm losing heart to take care of it, but I won't give up. I made a photo gallery of Guam pictures. It's only missing a couple of rolls of black and white. I don't actually know where they are.
Nice leaves. Osaka.
Front wheel of a Citroen 2CV I found in Mukonoso.2 June 2005, morning Yesterday was my first day of work at a new branch. This place is really busy. I think I must have had it easy at my last branch. I have another full day of classes today. I've gotten back most of the Guam photos now and scanned them in. They look good. I'll put them all into a set very soon. I think I'll enjoy exploring all the restaurants and photo opportunities around my new branch. It's in a big shopping complex, so there are a million places for lunch, and lots of people walking around. I was using my Fujifilm Klasse last night after work, and it was sounding wrong when it advanced the film. It may be a problem of sand inside, since I did use it on the beach and I got sand on the outside which I had to clean up. Perhaps I'll rewind this roll early and inspect the camera after work tonight. Better put a back-up in my briefcase.
Our Star Wars afflicted travelling companions Jenny and Paul, sitting down for Vietnamese food.
