こにちわ and good evening!
Have you ever taken a snap shot. Odds are you have. Recording moments in time by snap shot is as practiced and ubiquitous as cups of morning coffee in America. I have many pictures stored on electronic devices, and not all that I have the time or care to slop over casually onto publishing sites - but nice pictures all the same that do deserve some home somewhere. And what more appropriate place to show off all these photos than in a blog post that really has nothing to do about anything except for the part that that states I would like to share them with you. Keeping it simple today folks.
I am amazed everyday at the agility and balance of the young Japanese youth. Even in semi soggy sand, these kindergarten children keep a steady balance across the yard on these hand made walking sticks. I think there is another blog post where I pictured another youth climbing a planted bamboo shoot straight up about ten feet. Again, the young athleticism in this country is remarkable.
This one I did post on Instagram recently, although I love it so much here it is again. Unicycles are surprisingly common in Japan elementary schools, the single wheeled cycles are racked right in the entrance of the schools, right next to the little kid's shoe lockers. I imagine they have much practice with riding one, so I find it so strange that no one uses unicycles as transportation. I guess its all for fun out here.
One of my early morning schools is on route past an informal recycling facility. Or, maybe its a storage place for all the miscellaneous glass, I'm not sure. But whatever it is, it fascinates me and compels my attention every time I cycle past it. What I mean is that I live in a country that is hyper aware of disposal contaminates, and very well practiced in hygiene protocol - in every school office, including the teacher's lounge and behind the principal's desk, there is a sink station to brush teeth and wash hands. Trash is practically non existent in the streets or even in the homes really. So its hard to come across random junk piles like these. Impossible really. In fact, they are so rare that I had to sneak over a wired fence to snag a good picture for you.
Really, I don't go crazy for chocolate. An ex girlfriend once told me that there are two kinds of people on this Earth, people who like flavors, and people who like chocolate. I am apparently of the former. Still, its not like I loath chocolate. That's my small tangent into an explanation for this very rare Ecuadorian chocolate that happen to come upon me by chance through a friend. Its always a treat to explain the idea of multi-nationalism to the Japanese. "Yes, I am American. But, I am also have Mexican and half Ecuadorian." The resulting expression on their face is priceless. Anyways, its not that surprising that my friend remembered and gifted (which, on a side note, is a huge altruistic economy here) accordingly, when you speak in Japan, people listen earnestly.
I believe it was the last post, if not the one before last, that I remarked on the strong sun rays that penetrate my bedroom in the morning hours. If I sleep the opposite way, this is what I see along the inner walls of my bedroom. The edges, lines, and agreeing angles of this photo are really what got to me that morning. If you look to the bottom edges of the sun squares, you can notice a little bit of grating. The effect is much more pronounced in person. Its from the grated wiring that reinforces the glass sliding doors leading to the balcony from where the sun enters the room. Its too bad the photo couldn't capture these lines more clearly, the grid effect was truly cool and reminded me of those early cyberspace conceptual designs from the minds of the mid eighties, where imaginations envisioned the net as some infinite three dimensional grid of intersecting lines spotted with the occasional cube or floating sphere.
My morning commute traffic. Or. as my friend Max said, "rush hour."
This is essentially the best snack that I've found in Tosa city. Edible wasabi-seaweed paper. I like to put this in everything from homemade onigiri to miso soup and everything in-between.
Of course, I'm no saint. And alcohol is so entwined in social culture here, even more so than my university days if you can imagine that. It might have been twenty years ago in Japan that you could charge up a tab, play a round of golf, hit the sauna for a few hours, and charge it all to the company as a business expense. Know what I have found has changed in twenty years? Only that you have to now pay for your own round of golf when your boss calls you in for a "meeting." If there was ever a reason to learn the Japanese adopted Chinese characters called Kanji for me, its to learn to good sake from the mediocre.
The guardian to the beech.
Hanabi
is the Japanese word for fireworks, but its not as simple as that. There are several, many different types of fireworks in Japan that range in size, shapes, and colors. If you were, however, to categorize them all, you would come in line with four major sets. First, you have the Warimono.
These are the "simple," single exploding outward types that appear as chrysanthemums in their circular design. They are usually one huge explosion that dominate the sky. Then you also have the Pokamono
which make a sound as they pop in the sky and release multiple small wavy bands of streams in all directions, making for what looks like a head of frizzy hair. Hanwarimono
is a conjunction of the first two types. You can think of these as smaller bursts of chrysanthemums, a small collection of bursting circles in an array of colors. That is what you see in the picture above. Then finally you have your Katamono
. These are great if you can see them in person. I've been used to seeing them at festivals and family gatherings. Basically anyplace where you would expect both children and fireworks together. The style is arguably the most impressive and the most novel because when these suckers burst against the night sky, they incredibly light up images of octopuses or rabbits or even famous manga characters. Its all rather impressive really, the ingenuity to engineer an image after an explosion.
With Halloween passing us by, I would be remiss if I didn't remind you that I came back to this store right before the holiday to find that someone had bought the mask, and had dressed up as (I can only imagine) an Asian Barack Obama.
Not sure what happened on the 29th that made this cat so grumpy, but he's not having a good time.
Lastly, we should all have been lucky enough to see some really spectacular moons phases in the last couple weeks. Here in Japan at least, the moon was shining as bright as the sun.
That's all for now my friends. There is still more to come, and more posts with more unifying themes and more muttering rants about nothing (if your into that sorta stuff). For now, I must collect my sleeping back, its the only blanket that combats the oncoming winter cold, and some mornings even it's goose down filling is just barely enough to ward off the frost.
Rest well and good night! Love,
-A
No comments:
Post a Comment