Life in Japan

Hiroshima: Coming of age

2010-02-28T09:57:00.001+09:00

The Japanese love to celebrate. They have holidays for everything, and coming of age is no exception. The second Monday in January is basically a giant birthday party for everyone who has turned twenty over the last year.

Twenty is a magic number in Japan. To turn twenty is to become an adult. You can drink, smoke, drive and vote.

Wikipedia will tell you that "many women celebrate this day by wearing furisode (a style of kimono with long sleeves that drape down). What Wikipedia does not tell you is that these beautifully dressed young women head to local parks and gardens to have pictures taken, much like Senior pictures for high school students in the states.

On our first day in Hiroshima we arrived too early to check in to our hotel and decided to spend the afternoon at Shukkeien Garden.

It was a beautiful place with everything you could ask for from an Asian garden. We meandered along gravel paths along the shore of a lake that reflected forests of bamboo and stoic old man trees.

The intention of the designer was to put all the wonders of nature in this tiny space. So a steep hill served as a mountain. One bank of the river was paved in smooth round stones to simulate a beach. And footbridges crossed streams pretending to be rivers.

Because we were there on coming of age day, the garden held an added element of beauty the designer never could have planned for - young Japanese women in furisode.

When I saw the first girl I raised my camera and took a picture. She noticed my attention and smiled for the next one.

We spent the next thirty minutes wandering around the garden looking for the perfect opportunity to snap a photo. I don't often wish for one of those big cameras with the removable zoom lenses. Most of the time they seem like more trouble than they're worth. But that day - what amazing images I could have captured.

These are the best of the ones I took. They're the kind of pictures that make me stop and wonder, "How did I get here?" It's funny to think that some of these girls were probably asking themselves the same question.

I leave you today with a quote from Tim Cahill, "I am living out my adolescent dream of travel and adventure."

Hiroshima - Hello

2010-02-15T14:46:00.004+09:00

As we leave our comfy little Ryokan in Kyoto to once again board the bullet train, I think a bit on our next destination - Hiroshima.

In a little over an hour we will be Americans in Hiroshima. Americans in the city our military destroyed. I try not to think of it that way. I doubt that most Japanese think of us that way. After all, Hiroshima is a thriving modern city, welcoming tourism and the revenue it provides. Still I can't help but wonder if at least some of the older people will look at us with something like hatred. Would I, if the roles were reversed?

I wonder too, if traces of suffering will linger. Will it be a sad city or a hopeful one?

Soon I can stop wondering. We are there.

We leave the train station and enter a small park by the side of a river. Buildings reach for the sky on either side. The sky is gray. The air is cool. I take a picture of a faded orange elephant in the playground.

We cross a bridge, mostly because I think it's a pretty bridge and want to walk on it.

We notice our hotel is in sight, just a couple of blocks past the park. So far the city is gray but not sad, cool, but not unwelcoming. Of course, all that might change when we go to the memorials tomorrow.

But first, a surprise in the park.

Kyoto - 'till I get lost

2010-02-11T21:22:00.002+09:00

One last story about Kyoto before we move on to Hiroshima.

On the day we saw the thousand and one Buddhas we did a lot of walking. We walked from our hotel down a couple of blocks to the train station, then ten minutes to the temple, through the temple, in and around the National Museum, and then began an ill-fated quest to find another temple I had heard about.

By the time we headed back toward our hotel, my feet hurt and I was tired of walking. We decided to take the subway back to Kyoto train station.

Sadly, we ended up on the wrong train, confused by the map full of stations with names we'd never heard.

As we stood, swaying with the rhythm of the train, a little old Japanese man came up to us and said "Hello, welcome, welcome to Kyoto."

"Well, thank you." Grant said, with that slight southern twang that always makes me think of Elvis videos.

He asked us where we were from, we told him the United States. He said, "I visited your country. I was there three years."

Apparently, this old man had seen a lot in that three years. He talked about New York. He claimed that Maine was very small. I couldn't correct him. I just couldn't.

He said the trains were very bad in America, not nice, fast trains like in Japan. "You should build a train from Boston to Washington, D.C. when you get back to America."

Grant agreed. Strangely we'd just talked about that while on the Bullet Train to Kyoto. "Maybe when you are President. He could be President." The old man said to me. His eyes laughed.

He asked where Grant was from. Grant, of course, said Texas, though he hasn't lived there since he was a toddler. "Near Houston"

"I went to Texas," the old man said, "When I was in your country. I saw a very sad thing there."

I thought he was going to tell us about a car accident, or a family who was homeless, or some other tragic, but commonplace part of American life.

"Your President, Mr. Kennedy was shot. The police question me. They ask me what I saw. The shot came from the school book building. A very sad thing."

Grant and I nodded in sympathy and looked at each other, our eyes said, is he serious, was he really there?

We got off at the next stop. On the train ride back to Kyoto Station, I couldn't stop thinking about that old man. Did he really witness the Kennedy Assassination? Was he really standing in the crowd when someone shot an American President? Did he make the story up? Why? Did we misunderstand?

I leave you today with a quote from Napoleon Bonaparte, "History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."

Kyoto: Everyday life is the path

2010-02-01T19:38:00.004+09:00

We went in search of a Zen garden and found an aqueduct.

We didn't bring the guidebooks with us on the Japan world tour. They would have taken up too much room in our backpacks. Instead I carried a small plastic case full of note cards and small train maps. Each note card told me the name of a place and directions to get there from our hotel.
One of them said "Nanzen-ji" and under it the words "temple with zen garden". I knew that somewhere I had read about a Zen garden with raked gravel and carefully placed stones. Without my guidebooks, the only way of checking if this was the one was by going there and seeing for ourselves.

Nanzen turned out to be a beautiful, but otherwise unremarkable garden. It had a pond and a bridge arching over a spring and the ground was covered in moss between the foot trails. I was a little disappointed.

But just outside the garden we found something else that caught our attention: aqueducts.

From the ground we could see only a series of brick arches, stained with the passage of water and time. It reminded me of a train trestle.

But when we climbed the stone steps set into the side of the hill we found a deep trench of flowing water. A tiny wooden footbridge let us cross the aqueduct to an access path on the other side.

The path was deserted and quiet. I wanted to turn back, afraid we shouldn't be there. The drop down the side of the hill was steep, broken only by saplings and bamboo stalks. If we fell of the path it would be an unpleasant trip down. Falling the other direction, into the cold rushing water, didn't seem like a fun time either.

"They wouldn't have put a bridge there if they didn't want people up here." He was right. Besides, the path was more than wide enough for us to walk side by side without any danger of falling.

So, Grant and I walked along, accompanied by the sound of running water and our quiet conversation. At some point I looked around and realized we could be anywhere in the world. Trees, chill air, running water and a dirt path - if I stumbled upon this very scene in the woods of Maine it wouldn't have shocked me. We were half way around the world, and yet the world was exactly the same.

It was almost surprising to come out of the trees and see temples and family tombs laid out below us.

As we left the place I named Aqueduct Park, we stopped so Grant could take my picture on the steps of the huge gates to the complex of temples.

I guess it wasn't much like Maine after all.

I leave you today with a Zen proverb, "When you seek it, you cannot find it."

I see the forest and the trees

2010-01-27T21:17:00.008+09:00

Sanjusangendo Temple was hard to miss. It was long and low and painted orange. We paid our fee to get in, then followed the signs through the courtyard to a low building. We took off our shoes in the vestibule. Grant had some trouble figuring out how to make his motorcycle boots fit on the little shoe shelves, but eventually we made it work.

We put on the little slippers provided for tourists and followed the trickle of people into the temple.

I wasn't supposed to take pictures, so you'll have to imagine it: 1001 statues in a low, dark, unheated room. They are staggered so you can see each face. And each is slightly different. Forty-two arms fan out around each one, 21 to a side, delicate hands outstretched and holding the tools of the Buddha.

They are like a forest of Buddhas, standing in a building that was old when Columbus first set foot on the new world. The slippers force you to shuffle across the wooden floor. Incense wafts from somewhere ahead and, in the same breath, chanting.

Eventually, you see a break in the Buddha-trees. It is as though you were walking through a forest of birches and suddenly you came upon an ancient sycamore. The Buddha in the center is twice as tall as the others. It glitters int he darkness. It's hands hold the tools of the Buddha, tools that save humans, tools that save worlds. And at its feet the monks are chanting.

Tears prick your eyes. You catch your breath. It is heavy with incense. The chant goes on and on. Others stop to bow, clap their hands and pray, but you are a Westerner, raised in a Western Church. It is enough for you to stand and stare. to let your awe become a prayer, your breath - praise, your heart beat - chanting.

Then you are moving again, shuffling past another 500 Buddhas. The chant never fades from your ears.

To see pictures of the inside of the temple including the 1001 Buddha's, click Here.

I leave you today with a quote from Shakespeare's As You Like It, "and this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."

Kyoto: We're big in Kyoto

2010-01-17T18:04:00.008+09:00

We arrived on day four of our Japan world tour in the aggressively modern and massive Kyoto train station. A station so huge that we actually got lost in one of its many shopping centers while trying to find the exit.

We finally escaped onto a wide street lined with glassy high rise towers. That first view of Kyoto was deceptive. Walking about five minutes led us into streets so narrow we had to press against the walls to allow mopeds to pass. And pass they did, at about 60 miles an hour.

The Ryokan Shimizu is no trouble to find. Just walk down the tiny streets until you see the sign. Ryokan, in case you were wondering, means inn. And this was a traditional Japanese one.

We ducked under the half curtain and slid the door open. With our backpacks on, we easily filled the tiny foyer. Before we could step up into the lobby we had to take off our shoes and put on a pair of the Ryokan's slippers.

The man behind the counter checked us in and then led us up wooden steps to our room. He directed us to leave our sandals in the entryway before stepping up into the room.

The room itself was tiny, but it had all the amenities. Just to the right of the door was a sink and mirror. To the right of that was a tiny room holding only a toilet, with a heated seat of course, and a pair of bathroom sandals.

At the end of our tiny hall was a small bathing room. Half of the room was a bath tub deep enough to swim in. The other half was a shower. It had a drain in the floor and a shower head on a hook on the wall.

Finally he slid a door open and showed us our bedroom. The floors were tatami mats. Our beds, which lay directly on the floors, were three thin cushions with a foam pad on top. The comforters were covered with fitted sheets. I don't know why. The pillows were hard and thin.

We also had a tiny television, a table with tea things in a box on top, and a little basket full of towels and robes.

The windows really were made of thick paper, but they had glass on the outside to keep out the cold. The doors were only about five and half feet high. Grant hit his head on that door frame every day.

Other things that happened every day: we went exploring. We had to because the Ryokan rules said you had to be out of your room by 1000 and couldn't come back before 1600. Every time we left the staff handed us little hand warmer packs for our pockets and every time we returned they brought us little cups of orange tea.

They served breakfast as well, but Grant and I didn't eat any. A Japanese breakfast usually includes fish fillet, white rice, miso soup, some kind of fruit and green tea. Not the kind of thing I can stomach at eight o'clock in the morning.

Staying in the Ryokan was like staying at your grandmas house, if your grandma happened to be both Japanese and obsessed with cleaning.

I leave you today with a quote from my all time favorite show Futurama, "Welcome to Kyoto, the anagram lovers Tokyo."

Tokyo - The stage is all the world

2010-01-15T15:09:00.002+09:00

This will be my last post about Tokyo. Next we move on to Kyoto.

Even with the lights up the theater is dim. We are on the fourth floor, in a tiny balcony with only two rows of red upholstered seats. Far below, a man in traditional Japanese garb stands before a background of cherry blossoms. I can't understand him, so my mind wanders. Paper bags and programs rustle. My earphone guide pipes plinking rainwater music int o my left ear.

Finally the man raises his arms and says what sounds like hiiooo. The crowd responds by clapping in rhythm 3-3-3-2. The man leaves this stage, causing an eruption of activity in the audience. Men in suits leave their seats. People talk and fidget. Bells ring as men and women pull out their cell phones to check one last message.

The curtain is pulled across by an unseen stage hand, blocking the cherry blossoms from sight and replacing them with a series of red, green and black stripes.

The drums begin and so does the commentary. It informs me that in this performance "the ritual [of the seven greens] and a tale of revenge are combined to create a graceful prayer for good fortune." While I am still puzzling through the psychology of this statement, the audience claps. The curtain has risen revealing a stage. Twenty men sit on red covered risers. Some have song books, others instruments. All are in traditional dress.

The three characters of the dance appear out of a rectangular hole in the stage. As they come into view members of the audience yell out the stage names of the actors.

The 'woman' wears a red kimono embroidered in gold and bits of green. The lining is white, her sash, yellow. Her headdress is an amazing sculpture of diamonds - it's hard to believe that this beautiful girl is really a man.

The other two actors, the Soga brothers, wear pale blue over garments with white designs on them. The legs are so long that they trail a yard past the actors' feet. Their undershirts are red with two white stripes running from sleeve to sleeve across the chest. Each carries a small drum.

The hands, necks and faces of all three are painted white. So they look like china dolls who have learned to dance.

Now they prepare for the ritual of the seven greens. The greens are eaten on the 7th day of the New Year, a ritual that is still performed to this day. Coincidentally, today is the seventh.

In this performance, the Soga brothers - figures of Japanese folk lore - prepare to seek revenge on the man who had their father killed. They do this by performing the ritual of the seven greens. During the ritual seven types of greens are picked, prepared and eaten.

The commentary informs me that "the Soga brothers' wish for success of their vendetta, and by extension, this becomes a wish for good fortune for all who watch this dance."

By now I am too engrossed in the stage to worry about the psychology.

The dancers move with perfect precision. The stamping of their wooden sandals stays in perfect time with the music. Now and then a fan calls out an actor's name, but I hardly notice. For a few moments there is only music and dance and the swirling colors of the actors clothes.

There is nothing in the Western world that even begins to compare to this. Forget ballet. Forget opera. This is Kabuki.

All too soon, it is over. The lights come up. We go on to our next adventure.

Today I leave you with a quote from Mata Hari, "The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word."

Tokyo: The space between

2010-01-11T20:07:00.006+09:00

Sorry I'm a couple of days behind. So much is happening and I haven't had reliable Internet service. But I'll keep posting until I've told you all about it.

I noticed it the first time we arrived at the New Sanno. Outside the entrance to the hotel is a fountain in the middle of a round courtyard. The courtyard has a wall all the way around. Just visible over the wall, to the right of the hotel building, was a painting of a boy hugging his knees to his chest. The black and white paint showed amazing detail. If this was graffiti, it was very sophisticated graffiti.

Just below him, there was something else all together. It looked like a fanciful doodle with chalk on an old black chalk board, only it was 3 dimensional. It has words that I could just read over the top of the wall - No Man's Land.

Every time we walked into the hotel I noticed it and wondered what it was - a bar, a nightclub, a portal to another world? Finally we decided to investigate. On our way back from the Imperial Palace we detoured down a side street I thought might take us to the painting and the chalk board. It did, but we were no more enlightened than before. It was obviously a gate, a freestanding gate leading from nothing to nowhere. It looked like a dark cartoonists rendition of the torii gates found at the entrances to Shinto shrines.

Now I was really curious.

We went back to the hotel where I did what I always do when I'm curious - I googled it. Google promptly informed me that "No Man's Land" was a modern art display set up in the old French Embassy building. Seventy artists from France, Japan and maybe some other places got together and decorated everything - rooms, hallways, driveways and office furniture were all fair game.

The display would be dismantled at the end of January when it would be replaced with apartments. It was closed for the holiday, but would reopen on the sixth - today was the sixth. It was open until 6 pm; my clock said 4.

"We have to see this," I said. And this is what we saw.

- sheet metal paper airplanes crash landed into the driveway

- a graffiti Mario world complete with shells and coins

- a stairwell blocked by power cords that hung like vines

- an entire office spray painted silver from desk chair to stapler to floor

- a paper flower that sent tendrils out through windows and air vents

- a room covered in clay to look like bark

- a room filled waist high with shredded paper

- a family of Roomba robots sliding around a darkened room shining alphabet lasers on the floor from the end of long sticks strapped to their backs

- whole cities cut from books

and much more, so much I can't describe it. All I can say is if you live in Japan or can get here before Jan 31, you need to see this exhibit.

I leave you today with a quote from Charles Mingus, "Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

Tokyo: Today and Yesterday - part two

2010-01-08T09:30:00.006+09:00

Yesterday we explored ancient Japan. First stop was Kabuki-za theater to see a Kabuki performance. Kabuki is an ancient Japanese style of theatre that tells stories with styalized dance set to live music.

Since a full show tends to be hours long and pretty expensive, we chose to see a single show. For about $9 each we got seats in a tiny balcony on the fourth floor. The story was about a pair of Japanese brothers who wanted revenge on their father's killer. They and their sister performed the ceremony of the seven auspicious herbs for luck in their quest to kill him.

The audio commentary broadcast through our headphones informed us that "in this performance the ritual and a tale of revenge are combined to create a graceful prayer for good fortune," and that "the Soga brothers wish for sucess of their vendetta, and by extension, this becomes a wish for good fortune for all who watch this dance." Yeah.

For more about our experince at the Kabuki theater, stay tuned. I'll be posting more over the next few days.

After the theater we traveled to the Imperial Palace. The East Gardens are open for public veiwing during most of the year. Though January isn't exactly prime garden viewing season, it was still impressive.

We saw gaurdhouses that have stood for centuries, palace walls five feet thick, and the ruins of an old castle building that burned down only 19 years after construction finished.

Time to pack up and start our trip to Kyoto.

I leave you today with a quote from Blaise Pascal, "Our achivements of today are but the sum total of our thoughts of yesterday."

Tokyo: Today and Yesterday - part one

2010-01-07T17:50:00.006+09:00

Yesterday we visited the symbols of modern Tokyo. First we checked out Tokyo Tower. Picture a red and white version of the Eiffel Tower. You can see the tip of it from all over Tokyo piercing the blue sky between dozens of average looking high rises.

But what use is a tower without an observation deck? Grant and I spent about twenty minutes up there trying to pick out landmarks from the slurry of buildings below. We could see as far as Yokohama in one direction and the outline of Mt. Fuji in the other. Sadly Mt. Fuji was too far away to photograph.

Then we vied with a bunch of Japanese kids for our chance to stand on a glass panel that looked down at the base of the tower. Finally, we crowded into an elevator with about twenty other people and headed down to the fourth floor.

Like any modern Japanese tourist sight, Tokyo Tower has gift shops, a food court and a series of attractions. These include a wax museum and a Guinness Book of World Records museum.

At the wax museum we saw Marlyn Monroe, Gandhi and the Beatles. I took a picture of Grant standing with Chairman Mao.

At the World Records museum Grant pretended to be the world's fattest man,

and I tried on a ring made for the world's tallest man.

Oh and did you know that the world's tallest snowman was built in Bethel, Maine? Well now you do.

After Tokyo tower we went back to the hotel for a nap and then it was off to Shibuya. Shibuya is modern Tokyo at its finest. Have you ever seen footage of crowds of pedestrians surging through a four way intersection in Tokyo with giant television screens showing advertisements in the background? Well that's Shibuya.

This section of Tokyo has more energy than anywhere I've ever visited. People perch like pigeons on every possible surface, no step or planter or railing is safe. Giggling Japanese girls stagger around in much-too-high heels. Metro Japanese boys fiddle with their cell phones as they drag shopping bags through the streets.

Grant and I found an Italian restaurant in a basement. It was one of those restaurants where you order your meal from a vending machine but it's brought to you by a girl.

Halfway through the meal Grant said, "I just realized that we're eating spaghetti with chop sticks."

On the way home we stopped for doughnuts at a Krispy Kreme. We watched donuts being made on a conveyor belt behind a plane of glass as we stood in line. When we finally reached the counter the girl handed us a pair of donuts fresh from the belt. "A present," she said. That's right, free donuts.

I leave you today with a quote from the sampler my great-grandmother had on her wall when I was a child, "Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday."

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about yesterday...or something.

Japan World Tour!

2010-01-05T12:11:00.002+09:00

I know I haven't blogged on anything of consequence in a while, but all that is about to change. In about an hour Grant and I will begin our Japan World Tour. We will travel toTokyo, then Kyoto and finally Hiroshima before returning to Yokosuka on Jan 14.

I'll have my still camera and the brand new video camera Grant bought me for Christmas, so this will be most exstensively documented trip we've ever taken.

It will also be the lightest. Grant and I have managed to fit everything we need for 10 days of travel into two L.L. Bean backpacks. Since we will be traveling by train and on foot a lot of the time we didn't want to have to carry much.

I don't know what my internet access will be like, but I'll keep you as updated as possible.

I leave you today with a quote from Jacqueline Cochran, "I have found adventure in flying, in world travel, in business, and even close at hand... Adventure is a state of mind - and spirit."

Someone else's mirror

2009-12-07T09:08:00.004+09:00

This weekend Grant and I had a very small adventure. We visited the Yokohama Archives of History. The building stands at the site where Japan and the U.S. signed the Treaty of Kanagawa, opening Japan's ports to the world.

All this sounds very academic, and it was. But it was also an existential adventure. In the courtyard we saw a Tabunoki Tree. They call this tree the last living witness to the signing of the treaty. Supposedly, after the great Kanto earthquake and the subsequent fires, this tree grew from the roots of the one standing in the same spot in 1854.

Me in front of the Tabunoki Tree in the courtyard.

Inside the museum, I got that Scooby-Doo-esque sensation that the reflection in the mirror wasn't mine, but someone else, aping my movements. It was disconcerting to see a time line listing China's Opium wars and the American Civil war as events that kept other countries from seeking trade relationships with Japan. One wall displayed a series of portraits of Commodore Perry, the U.S. Naval Officer who landed in Yokohama in 1854 and helped to open the ports of Japan.

One picture was an actual portrait of Perry from the Illustrated London News. The others were artist renditions of Perry, mostly drawn by people who had never seen him or a picture of him in their lives. There was one of him holding a Samurai sword, another of him with the long nose of a tengu, or heavenly dog. Only one of the six artist renditions looked anything like the actual man, and there was that using-someone-elses-mirror feeling again.

Exhibit after exhibit, I saw bits of American history skimmed through a filter of how they affected Japan.

In Scooby-Doo cartoons, the monster mimics someone, usually Shaggy, so well that he almost begins to wonder if that really is what he looks like after all. I wondered what the Americans who landed in Japan thought of the drawings and sketches showing the foreigners at work, at play, in foreign costume, eating foreign food, drinking foreign drinks, and living in strange houses like none the Japanese had ever seen.

Grant walking on a Yokohama survey map from 1881.

Did those Americans and Dutch and French who poured into Yokohama after 1854 ever wonder which of them was real, the self they knew, or the one they saw in the newspapers day after day?

I leave you today with a quote from Drew Carey, “I see my face in the mirror and go, 'I'm a Halloween costume? That's what they think of me?”

Can you take a leap of faith...

2009-11-19T19:46:00.007+09:00

On the rare occasions when Grant and I watch TV together we watch one of two channels, the Discovery Channel or the Travel Channel. One day, we watched a Discovery Channel special about the lights of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is a city of skyscrapers. All of these buildings have lights on them. Some did mini light shows at one time of night or another. Then along came some bright guy who said, "Hey, what if all the buildings did their light show at the same time?" And thus the Hong Kong light show was born.

Think about that for a minute, an entire city coordinated into one giant light show. That's pretty darn Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious! So when we found out the ship would be going to Hong Kong, the light show was at the top of our list of things to do.

And that is how we found ourselves boarding the top floor of a double decker ferry (because everything in Hong Kong is double decker) and sailing across Victoria Harbor to Kowloon.

We waited, with a crowd of a couple of hundred toursits and locals on the Tsim Sha Tsui prominade.

Junks and ferries bobbed on the water in front of us. Behind us KCR clock tower reached toward the sky, and a colorful dragon advertised the Asia Games. I asked Grant for the time every thirty seconds. Finally, it was eight o'clock.

A sound system poured music over the crowd and a pair of voices introduced the light show in English and Cantonese. At last it began.

Cameras shutters shnicked. The water turned purple and green and blue and white. The music played on, turning this flashing of lights into a dance.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I thought: "Holy crud, I'm on the discovery channel." Just months before I saw this on my television and now, here I was, standing in the middle of it. Remember the scene in Mary Poppins when they jump into the sidewalk art and dance through the pictures? It felt like that, but with an Asian soundtrack.

The videos don't do it justice. But I'll stick one on here anyway.

I leave you today with a quote from Mary Poppins, spoken by Bert the chimney sweep, "What did I tell ya? There's the whole world at your feet. And who gets to see it but the birds, the stars and the chimney sweeps." and me.

Market day

2009-11-07T11:45:00.007+09:00

disclaimer: Those with weak stomachs should probably never, ever visit Hong Kong.

Our second adventure was a trip to the market. And I'm not talking about a grocery store here, I'm talking about the real, old-fashioned, outdoor markets that have existed since the beginning of civilization. There are two major tourist attractiony ones in Hong Kong, Graham Street Market and Cat Street Market.

This is the entrance to Graham Street Market.

Graham Street is really just an alley, packed on either side with stalls and booths that sell almost anything imaginable to eat, along with some things that defy imagination.

This is a lovely vegetable stand.

As you can see, by stand, I mean pile of plastic crates full of various vegetables with a woman sitting in the middle of the pile.

All the vegetables looked perfectly fresh, no squishy tomatoes or wilted lettuce here. This stuff was probably picked within the last day. Graham street is a bit like a giant farmers market. Except for the man slicing fish in half while others swim in the tank beside him. Except for the 30 pound bags of rice with scoops in the top so you can measure out your portion. And except for the slabs of meat hanging from hooks complete with the occasional fly.

By the way, those things hanging over the tub with the fan to keep the flies away are entrails. Whose? I don't know. We gave that booth a wide berth.

At a less tourist-friendly market in the 'Old China' part of town we also saw a goat head stripped of half of its skin, but with horns still attached, and a man butchering a cow. I could tell it was a cow because he had the cows legs laid out on the table next to the giant head.

Fortunately, not all markets in Hong Kong are quite so gruesome.

Cat Street Market was devoid of all animal parts.

Though it did have a lot of animals carved out of jade and other ornamental stones, along with jewelry, clocks, teapots and scads of Chairman Mao memorabilia. I found presents for both of my parents here. Grant found a Chairman Mao pocket watch. It was lot like the mickey mouse watch I had as a kid, only instead of keeping time with his arm Mao just waved at whomever had opened the watch.

I leave you today with a quote from Tommy Smothers, "Red meat is not bad for you, now blue-green meat, that's bad for you."

Getting High in Hong Kong

2009-11-05T11:22:00.015+09:00

disclaimer: no drugs were abused in the making of this post

Our first adventure in the Hong Kong special administrative district was far removed from the usual hustle and bustle of the city proper. We took the amazingly simple to navigate Hong Kong subway system to Lantau island, the island just west of Honk Kong. We were headed for Ngong Ping Village and the Po Lin Monastery. What's the best way to get from the train station to the secluded monastery, you ask. Why by Skyrail of course. Otherwise known as a cable car.

So we waited in line to board a car with a woman and her mother who studiously ignored the no eating or drinking signs, a little girl who spent most of the time pasted to the window and a women with two young teenagers who spoke to each other in a disconcerting blend of Cantonese and English.

We climbed higher and higher until the entire Hong Kong airport lay like a particularly unattractive bath mat at our feet. The brochure called this "a spectacular view of Hong Kong International Airport." But I tend to agree with Douglas Adams who once said wrote, "It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear."

We saw fishermen with their boats, but soon left them behind as we climbed foothills much more swiftly than the men on the hiking trails below us.

Finally, it came into view, the thing we had come to see. At 110 feet it is the tallest seated outdoor Buddha statue in the world. He dwarfed our Kamakura great Buddha which is less than fifty feet tall. He dwarfed even the hill on which he sat.

Once again on the ground we stopped for lunch a little noodle shop with stand up tables. Don't let the little noodle shop and the brochures claiming that Ngong Ping is a Chinese style village fool you. There were four gift shops, several souvenir stands and a Starbucks under those clay tile roofs.

As we walked past the construction at the main entrance I wondered how the monks felt about all this. Did it bother them that their monastery had become a tourist attraction? Would the Buddha himself shake his head at the sight of a 250 metric ton statue of himself surrounded by six 10 foot tall statues of Devas offering gifts?

We climbed the 268 steps to stand on the platform just below the statue.

Inside the base of the statue was a museum, which we explored. And outside was a view like no other.

We took pictures, of the Buddha, of the Devas, of each other.

Back down the 286 steps we visited the monastery. There were a couple of small vegetarian cafes on the monastery grounds with signs that said, Please no meat or alcohol.

There were also huge pots full of incense sticks releasing pennants of smoke into the air. A sign said: warning, incense brazier is hot.

Oh yes, the Buddha was definitely laughing at us.

I leave you today with a quote from the Buddha, "When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky."

For more pictures please visit my Picasa album at: http://picasaweb.google.com/read.read.rose/TianTanBuddha?feat=directlink

100th Post: The world so far

2009-10-31T14:45:00.003+09:00

The longer I live and travel outside the United States the more I realize how truly weird my home country is. Everything we do, everything we are, is so different from the rest of the world. I am sometimes amazed that I ever thought those things were normal.

Take, for instance, our money. In Hong Kong the $10 bill is purple and blue and pink with a transparent plastic panel. It's made out of a plasticy-strange material that is almost impossible to tear. Compare that to our bland green and gray American paper-cloth money. In my collection of money from around the world U.S. money wins the "one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others" game.

And then there's our food. American's are far more limited and far more unhealthy in what we eat than almost any country in the world. In Japan if you buy fruit flavored candy it's actually colored and flavored with fruit not chemicals. In Hong Kong you can buy a whole duck with the bill still attached, or a fish caught that morning and filleted in front of you at the out door market.

In America our places of worship are often locked between services for fear that some unscrupulous person will deface or plunder them. In Hong Kong, the shrines are open to the street and the public. A 100 foot tall Buddha stands at the top of a mountain, watching over the monastery and the tourist town below.

Many American's speak only one language. They might learn a second language half-heartedly in high school but it is soon left behind and forgotten. In every country I've visited, the people study English. They speak their own language and ours. We, generally, speak only our own.

In Hong Kong, Japan, and even Panama the cultures are older, far older, than nearly anything you can find in the U.S. the people live so steeped in tradition that they hardly notice its influence in their lives.

In a year, we will return to the United States, back to the world I once considered normal. I wonder if I will ever see it that way again.

I leave you today with a quote from Miriam Beard, "Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living. "

Breaking News

2009-10-28T10:48:00.003+09:00

Big news folks! First of all this is my 99th post, so next blog will be a special 100 posts post. Second, in roughly 12 hours I will be landing in Hong Kong. I'll be there until Nov 3 so if I don't answer e-mails that's why.

Now if we combine big news the first with big news the second we get big news the third: The 100th post of Life in Japan will be coming to you live from Hong Kong.

Yay!

Around the world in 90 minutes...

2009-10-18T22:02:00.007+09:00

Last weekend I bought trinkets in Peru. I watched a Chinese dragon dance. I photographed a man from Ghana with skin so dark his teeth looked like stars in a midnight sky.

Last Sunday it was not enough for me to be an American in Japan. I had to be an American in Japan, eating a German pretzel.

My friend Carol and I took the train to Yokohama. It was a beautiful day, so I stopped to take some postcard shots of landmark tower.

Then we payed 200 yen each to get into Octoberfest. There, Japanese men and women, and a few ex patriots, sat at long tables under the hot sun drinking beer from glass steins the size of pitchers. We bought deformed German pretzels and gawked at the costumes.

One Japanese man was dressed in leiderhosen. Another wore a beer mug head piece.

We even spotted a few girls in German bar maid costumes who spoke English in authentic German accents.

Since I don't really like beer and it was warm and crowded enough to make Carol not want to partake, we soon moved on to the World Festa.

There, in the corner of a long park, we found booths from the diverse countries of the globe. Ghana, Chili, Sri Lanka, Napal, the Republic of Sudan, Turkey and many more were represented. I wondered how Yokohama put this all together. Did somebody call up Spain and say, "hey guys, we're having a party. Bring your giant skillet"?

At one point I stopped to buy my mother something from the Peru booth. "Sumimasen," I said to the man, and showed him the object I wanted to buy. "1000 yen," he answered in English. I stood in a park in Japan, asking a Peruvian man, in English, what the cost of object in my hand was, and then paid him in Japanese Yen.

To quote that old Disney ride, "it's a small, small world."

We stopped to watch the Chinese dragon dancers (see previous post). Then made a circuit of the whole event - a world tour. I felt like I was playing Katamari in real life, like I could just role up the whole world one booth at a time.

The only silly part of the whole thing was the United States of America booth. It was just a tent full of helium balloons - no food, no crafts for sale, just hundreds of cartoon character shaped balloons.

On our way out we stopped to take a picture of a pair of woman in cultural costumes.

And again to photograph the kimono clad girls, fascinated by a man with a rabbit on a leash.

I leave you today with a quote from the best commercial of all time, it used to run all the time on the Discovery Channel. "I love the mountains, I love the clear blue skies ... I love the whole world, and all it's craziness, boom-dee-ah-da, boom-dee-ah-da, boom-dee-ah-da, boom-dee-ah-da..."

The Dragon Dance

2009-10-11T19:02:00.008+09:00

We heard the drums from across the field and there was nothing we could do but follow them. We joined the crowd huddled around a temporary stage. In the grass between stage and crowd the monsters faced off - dragons from the depths of man's imagination. Perhaps the drums called them. Perhaps they called the drums. Either way, the end result was that we stood, watching them, awaiting our doom.

They pitched and jumped and we, poor humans, were hypnotized. When they turned on us, it was too late to run - too late to do anything but press back against the crowd, praying they would pass us by.

For many, there was no escape. The dragons came and stretched their mighty jaws to close on human heads. Children cried to see their parents' heads devoured. Parents snatched their babies away from the beasts.

In moments I found myself in the path of one of the beasts. The crowd pressed close, still trapped in the rhythm of the drums.

In desperation, I raised my camera. If I was to be eaten, at least I could document my last moments.

To my surprise, the beast passed me by. My head was not eaten. My hair went unmussed. My sunglasses stayed on my head.

The dragon dancers threaded their way back to the stage. They lurched to their full height and waggled their eyebrows at the crowd. The dance was over. We were free.

when it rains...

2009-10-06T12:51:00.003+09:00

It wasn't really raining when I left the house. As I walked home from the post office with a heavy package under one arm and a wind-friskied umbrella in the other, it most definitely was.

Just as I was passing the chapel I heard a car pull over and a woman's voice say. "Can we give you a ride?" I turned. It was a small, silver brand new looking car. The driver and passenger were both under thirty and Asian. The car smelled like fried chicken.

"Thank you very much," I said.

"Oh, no problem," the driver answered as her friend shifted the Popeye's chicken bags to the other side of the backseat. I climbed in.

Some boppy music was playing on the radio. "Where are you heading?"

"Across from the community center."

"I'm not from here; You'll have to tell me where to go."

A stranger, stopped her car, and gave a ride to a young woman walking in the rain. She drove her home safely and asked nothing in return.

Just when you think the world is going to hell in a hand basket...

I leave you today with a quote from Homer's Odyssey, "All strangers and beggars are from Zeus, and a gift, though small, is precious."

So tell me what you want

2009-09-08T06:58:00.002+09:00

This week the Spice Girls made me cry.

We were standing in the hanger bay during the friends and family day cruise listening to canned music coming from a sound system on a collapsible stage when "Wannabe" came on.

My first thought was "I can't believe there playing this song."

My second thought was a memory. I leaned on Grant's arm. "My cousins and I used to listen to this song. I think Kimmy and Lish even did a dance routine to it at one of their recitals." Actually I think the song they danced to was "Stop", but it seemed true at the time.

I remember jumping on the trampoline singing that song with them while they danced. In the memory the sun is shining over my grandparent's yard and the pool is open. Nicky is a blur of motion - in the pool, on the trampoline, jumping around the yard.

So much has changed in the last twelve or so years. I'm married and living in Japan. Kim and Alisha are in college. Jonathan has a job at an accounting firm. Erika just got engaged. Matthew lives in Florida. Noah turned 14 this week. And Nicky - I miss Nicky.

As the song played the sun was shining over the ocean where a Japanese Coast Guard ship kept pace with us. I pressed my face against Grant's arm to hide the tears.

I leave you today with a quote from an unknown sage, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

Friends and Family Day Cruise

2009-09-06T06:35:00.007+09:00

Yesterday I went out to sea.

Grant and I were awake and standing at the guard shack at the pier before the sun came up. Through the gate, across the pier and up the stairs to the bridge we walked side by side. We loitered in the hangar bay. Giant U.S. and Japanese garrison flags hung from one wall. A small stage had been erected in front of them faced by rows of nearly empty chairs.

The guests trickled in but we didn't stay to watch. Grant brought me through some bulkhead doors, which closed with lever systems, and down some steep metal stairs to the Reactor office. He stopped there only long enough to tell his boss he had arrived and then led me to Dosimetry where he works most days.

The Dosimetry office was about ten feet by six. It held three desks, four chairs, a couple of computers, a mini fridge, some file cabinets a shredder and an entire wall of binders. We sat there for a while talking to a couple of the sailors and half watching a ridiculous show on their little TV.

Grant actually had a job to do that morning, but first we went up to the flight deck to watch the ship pull out.

Helicopters beat overhead. Tug boats and a Japanese coast guard ship roared to life. The ocean rolled softly under us, too softly to feel. It started slowly. At first I was hardly certain we were moving. But then I noticed there was less blue sky between the pier crane and the ship's island. Soon we were out in the bay and trailing a bubbling wake.

Grant said. "Okay, now we have to go do something way more interesting."

So I followed him down the metal stairs with the ocean agitating under my feet, through the narrow hallways and rounded doorways, past pipes and ducts and door after door to dosimetry. I sat in a chair and took pictures while he set up for an internal monitoring. That's when they check to see if you have any radiation in your body before they let you transfer off the ship.

As a joke he handed me one of the lead bricks they use to shield the equipment. I almost dropped it. It was at least four times as heavy as it looked.

We waited around for the equipment to calibrate, then to recalibrate, for the person he was monitoring to show up, for the test to finish.

Then we went back up the through the doors, down the halls, up the stairs, stop to close a bulk head behind us at least once every level and we were back in the hangar bay waiting for lunch.

We had only 15 minutes to eat before the air show and there was no way I was going to miss watching flight operations on an aircraft carrier if I had the chance to see them.

The air wing prepared the planes for take off, and they did, one after another in quick, loud succession.

A helicopter lowered a rescue diver on a belay line. A plane whizzed by at almost the speed of sound, knocking two swift gunshots into every chest. Even with the little ear plugs they had given us the sound was monstrously loud. Jet pilots showed off their stuff, rolling and diving and whispering overhead in a kind of jet pet show. We even got to see one plane refueling another in midair.

Then it was over and we took the ear plugs out and headed down again into the machinery hum of the ship at work. We took the elevator, the one that brings planes from the flight deck to the hangar bay. It moved faster than we expected and most people screamed as if they were on a ride at an amusement park.

The Moral, Welfare and Recreation division had set up video games, face painting, balloon animals and sumo wrestling suits for the kids and series of bands performed on the stage. But every time we were in the hangar bay I looked at the water.

We were moving fast now and I could feel the boat rolling under my feet. It was like being on an airplane only the dips and rolls were more gradual, less violent. We were completely at sea, no shore, no land as far as my eye could discern. The ocean sparkled by, lit by an unveiled sun. I couldn't help but stop to see it.

Grant seemed amused. This is his life. Six months or so out of every year the ocean rolls outside the huge picture window of the hangar bay doors. He doesn't stop to watch it much anymore.

I leave you today with my favorite prayer, "Oh God, be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small."

And loyal viewers like you.

2009-09-04T09:41:00.003+09:00

Konichi-wa loyal readers. I don't often ask you for much so please indulge me this once.

My little brother is turning 14 this month and he has a special birthday wish. He wants to con all his friends into donating to the American Red Cross, one of my favorite charities. His goal is a total of $100 but lets see if we can do better than that. Even one dollar makes a difference.

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/birthdays/146334?m=e0bc6388

Thanks for the help.
Namaste
Me

I leave you today with a quote from the Buddha, "If you knew what I know about the power of giving, you would not let a single meal pass without sharing it in some way."

Potty Talk

2009-08-23T17:11:00.004+09:00

No one should ever visit Japan without first being warned about the bathrooms. Since I love all of you allow me to do the honors.

Japan is a complex mix of ancient tradition and modern technology. Nowhere is this more evident than in the bathroom.

In America all public bathrooms are pretty much the same. Cleanliness and state of repair may vary but the basic design of sink, soap dispenser, hand dryer and throne-like toilet enclosed in a small stall with space around the top and bottom remains pretty much the same.

In Japan, all bets are off.

Many Japanese bathrooms do not have soap dispensers or hand dryers. The sinks are made to scale with the people, which means they rise to somewhere about thigh high on the average American. Though the Japanese are, as a cultural group, the cleanest people I have ever met, their bathrooms often smell like the bathroom of a frat house after an all-weekend kegger when some well-meaning-almost-sober person has sprayed the whole place with disinfectant and then passed out from the fumes. This is especially true if the bathroom features squat toilets.

"What," you ask with some disgust, "is a squat toilet."

"This," I answer with more disgust, "is a squat toilet."

And in case you harbor some confusion as to how someone would go about using such a device, the bathrooms at the Mt. Fuji visitors center featured a handy sign.

For many older Japanese people the squat toilet is the only hygenic facility. They may stink like fermented amonia but at least your nether regions never touch a seat.

For those people who may be confused by the Western style facilities Mt. Fuji offered another handy reference.

Now I don't want to give you the impression that Japan is completely backward in the bathroom. There is another extreme. For instance, I strongly recomend using the facilities in the Narita airport. The toilet seats are heated. And each stall comes with an array of buttons that control features like, "flushing sound for masking of bathroom noises" and a bidet which is a french term that I understand to mean, surprising jet of water. Let's not think about the hygene issues raised by pushing buttons inside a toilet stall.

I even once used a bathroom at a gas station where the toilet cover went up and a running water noise started when you turned on the bathroom light.

Large bathroom facilities often have maps showing you where the sinks are and which toilets are western or squat style.

But the best inovation I've seen so far is this.

A red light means the stall is in use. A green light means it's vacant. This, my friends, is genius.

I leave you today with a quote from Shakespeare, "Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court."

Your mountain is waiting...

2009-08-17T18:50:00.006+09:00

Whenever you travel outside of your own state, no matter what your destination, there is always the List. The List of places and things you absolutely must see and do while you are there. Even if you set off blissfully unaware of the List, when you come home everyone will interrogate you based on the List.

Did you see the Panama Canal? They will ask. The Eiffel tower. The Sphinx. The big boot in front of L.L. Bean?

If your trip was especially short or if you were traveling on business you might be excused from completing all of The List. But woe to the traveler who spends a month or more in a place and doesn't manage it. Your friends and acquaintances will, however unconsciously, think you a bit more of an idiot than they originally suspected. They will come away from conversations with you thinking, She went to Russia and didn't see those towers with the puffy cakes on top? The girl must be unstable.

With this in mind, I chose to wake up at 5:45 in the morning on Sunday to hike Mt. Fuji. Our tour group, including my friends Amy, Keri, Cathy and Cathy's four-year-old son planned to hike from the 5th station to the 6th station.

First we stopped at the visitors center to buy souvenirs and take pictures in front of the view. The weather was spectacular. It was clear skies, hot sun and bird song all the way to the mountain.

After that the bus dropped us off at the Fifth station, the farthest vehicles were allowed to drive, to begin our trek upmountain.

The place was not a zoo. Zoos tend to be orderly with the animals all in their respective cages. This was more of a Bar Harbor on Fourth of July sort of scene. Large groups, small groups and tour groups mobbed the gift shop and generally hung around with their backpacks sticking out. I fought through the crowd to reach a desk in the corner of the main gift shop. It was the Mt. Fuji post office. I mailed my little brother a post card. Then I bought a walking stick for my father. (I got my mom a present too, but it's a secret) At each station of the hike you could get the stick branded to mark where you had been.

Not long after we began walking I was glad for the stick. It's not that the hike was difficult. But the ground was not what I had expected. In Maine the mountains are giant slabs of granite with trees poking out. By contrast, Mt. Fuji is the husk of three volcanoes that merged into one huge structure. It is covered, perhaps entirely formed, by porous gravel. This made the walking slippery especially on the steeper slopes.

We walked up a wide gravel path, stopping ever few minutes to take pictures and catch our breath, then down a steeper zig-zag path to the place where a pretty young Japanese woman heated a brand over a fire and filled the air with the smell of firewood as she marked our sticks.

By the last third of our journey little T.J. who had done well so far decided he had done quite enough. He begged his mother to pick him up. Cathy, who is seven months pregnant, could not.

I offered to piggy-back him. At first he seemed leery, he didn't know me very well after all, but since it was that or walking he agreed. I handed Amy my backpack.

A dozen steps later T.J. was happier than he had been all day. Now and then he tapped my shoulder and pointed over the edge at the world set out below us. I never could tell what he was pointing at but he was contented just to have me look. I babbled as we walked, talking about ice cream, which we were getting when we returned, and clouds, which cast shadows far below us, and that shiny thing off in the distance, which I never did figure out.

"I like little kids," I told Cathy. "Because they don't mind when I babble at them." She laughed, but I was serious.

I carried him most of the way back to the Fifth Station and then we sat on the ground and ate ice cream. Mine was cranberry flavored.

I leave you today with a quote from my all-time favorite author, Terry Pratchett, "It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called life."

Nihogo wa hanashimasu ka?

2009-08-13T20:52:00.003+09:00

I've been in Japan for nearly a year now. I can eat sushi, ride the trains and make change in Yen. Now, finally, I am learning to speak the language.

Yesterday I went to my first Japanese class. It's not much, just an hour and a half a week at the Community Center. But it has the advantage of being taught by an actual factual Japanese woman.

Walking across the street to the community center I had a little of the first-day-of-school jitters. Will the teacher be a jerk? Is this class to hard for me? Will the other kids like me?

It turned out better than I could have imagined. The teacher, Setsuko-san, was charming and totally realistic about what her students could do. There were only eight of us. One woman had taken the class before. Another woman was Korean or Chinese and had trouble forming the syllables. Another spoke Portuguese but still managed to learn Japanese through an English filter.

Cultures melded, languages clashed. It was stupendous. I can't even explain to you the difference between studying Japanese from a book and actually having a conversation with a classmate. As for the textbook, what textbook? Setsuko-san said something, we repeated it, and repeated it and repeated it until we got it right. She gave us two reference sheets she had made and asked us to study them for next week.

I learned to say butterfly: chocho. And eyeglasses: megane. And even "No, that isn't true.": ie, so dewa arimasen.

For the first time since I started studying Japanese way back in my Freshman year of college I feel like I will actually be able to learn this language.

I leave you today with a quote from Rita Mae Brown, "Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides."

Shoo fly, don't bother me...for I belong to somebody

2009-08-11T16:18:00.003+09:00

The other day I realized that I cry a lot more than I used too. It's not that I'm sadder than I've been before. I think I'm just more aware.

With all that happened last year a marriage, a move, and what seemed like many deaths, I suppose it's no surprise that things touch me more deeply than ever before.

The other day I was sitting in an I'M IN CHARGE class. The Red Cross offers this class to 10-12-year-olds to teach them how to be safe when home alone, walking home from school or surfing the net. I was covering the class for the Red Cross newsletter I write every month.

The teacher showed her class of 11 kids a video. It was a cheesy thing, hosted by 4 happy kids. Two were girls. Two were boys. One was black, one Hispanic, two white. It was a classic politically correct safety propaganda.

I had to blink back tears.

When the kids explained: you should always check your house when you get back from school to make sure nothing is suspicious, and never go in if something doesn't look or feel right, I heard: Don't get murdered.

When they said: never get into a car with someone you don't know or take anything from strangers, I heard: don't get kidnapped.

When they said: don't let anyone touch you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, I heard: don't get raped.

Run. Scream. Protect yourself. Keep telling until someone listens: stay safe, stay alert, stay alive.

I had to look at my notebook. I couldn't look at these kids. Ten were girls. One was a boy. One was black. Two were Hispanic. Eight were white.

Each and every one was somebody's baby.

I leave you today with a quote from the Denis Breeze, "The only moral lesson which is suited for a child, the most important lesson for every time of life is this: Never hurt anybody." If only the adults could learn it too.

Operator, operator, this is ship to shore

2009-08-08T07:59:00.002+09:00

Grant called last night. I have been bugging him for a week to call me. I had some things we needed to talk about, like making plans to visit the states in September. Yes folks, I'm coming back again.

From 5:30 to 6:30, when he said he would call, I sat on my couch playing video games and waiting. You know the kind of waiting I mean. When the thing you want to happen could happen any second but it could also be an hour from now so you pretend to focus on something else but really you're glancing at the clock every five seconds thinking, "now, now?".

Finally, I checked my e-mail. He couldn't figure out how to dial a DSN (that's a base phone number) from the ship's phones. I e-mailed back. "Ask Morrison. He calls his wife." Ouch. Grant said he could feel my rage through the Internet. I wasn't enraged, not yet, but I sure found it strange that a Nuclear technician could not figure out a telephone. He asked Morrison.

I went back to my game.

When the phone rang maybe half an hour later I actually said aloud, "That'd better be you." before I picked up the phone. You talk to yourself when you're alone a lot. At least, I do.

I didn't recognize the caller ID and when I picked up the phone a crackly mumbling whistle greeted me. It was him.

I'm sure most of you have never talked to someone who was calling from a pay phone on an aircraft carrier, so please allow me to describe the experience.

Imagine talking to one of the most important people in your life, only you haven't spoken in months, oh yeah and you're talking on walkie talkies while standing on a pedestrian walkway in a tunnel with cars whizzing below you every few seconds. If you both talk at once you miss what the other person is saying. You have to speak slowly or the other person can't understand you. Sometimes the phone crackles and you hear a whistling. Like wind through the fire escape outside my bedroom.

Sometimes I felt like I was Radar on MASH. I had this little phone in a bag to connect me to the world and I was lucky if anyone could hear me. My grandmother is always reminding me that we are lucky. When my Grandfather was in Navy they only had letters, no Internet, no ship to shore phones, not even get-there-in-a-week priority mail; just the slow old postal service.

I feel lucky.

I leave you today with a Persian Proverb, "Go and wake up your luck."

Won't you be my neighbor

2009-08-04T07:53:00.007+09:00

People ask me, "What's it like living on base?"

It's like a huge, idyllic small town. Everybody knows everyone else, or at least knows someone who does. The kids all play together. And for the most part people are happy to help each other.

We have schools and parks, a grocery store and a library, churches and playgrounds. We even have an annual town festival, you know, those mini fairs towns host to get people to come spend money and see what the town has to offer. Ours is called Friendship Day.

And yet, despite the cotton candy, carnival games and non-profit organization fund raising booths, Friendship Day reminded me why this base is unlike any small town in the world.

At ten o'clock in the morning we open the gates up to any Japanese citizen who wants to come on base, buy our tee-shirts and sample our pizza. By noon, walking from the Red Cross fundraising booth to the post office was like negotiating an obstacle course built of foreign nationals. The closest thing most Maine town festivals get to foreign nationals is a family of Canadians gone south for a vacation.

Later in the evening, the girls and I went to see one of the many outdoor concerts held throughout the day. Looking around, we saw dozens of women in beautiful yukata, light cotton kimonos.

The concert was a Kiss cover band based out of Tokyo. I saw Kiss, and they were Japanese. Idyllic small town? Maybe, but this is not Leave it to Beaver. I could try to describe them. But I think this video is more eloquent than I. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc7zw8FhdCY

We ended the day as all festivals should end, with fireworks. And even those reminded me I wasn't in Kansas anymore. The show lasted half an hour and included fireworks shaped like cubes, fish, smiley faces and Hello Kitty.

This photo borrowed from my friend Amy. Check her out. Buy her stuff. She'd be pretty awesome even if she wasn't my friend. http://amyarvinphotography.smugmug.com/.

I leave you today with a quote from that expert on neighbors Mr. [Fred] Rogers, "If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."

Leaving on a jet plane

2009-08-01T06:36:00.002+09:00

My father doesn't want to come visit, not because he doesn't like me and not because he doesn't like Japan. What's holding him back is the 13 hours he would have to fly each way to get here.

Sometimes I try to convince him it's not so bad. Then I make the trip and realize, oh yeah, it really is that bad. Being on a plane for that long is a little like being locked in a four by four box for a day. You have movies and books to entertain you, but whatever you do you can't escape the knowledge that you are trapped.

You watch the creeping progress of the plane on the little map shown on the screen attached to the seat in front of you. The guy in that seat reclines it as far as it will go. Suddenly the map is two inches from your face and you feel claustrophobic.

This trip, I got the hook-up. As I was boarding the plane the staff member who checked me on said, "oh, we had to change you." She pulled a different boarding pass out of the podium. "We were trying to keep a family together. Don't worry, it's a better seat."

As I walked down the breezeway to the plane I checked the row number - 25. I was pretty sure that put me in this new section United made up called economy plus. Usually it cost $120 to upgrade to a seat with about 5 inches more leg room. I got it for free. Also, my original seat had been a window, this one was an aisle.

Usually I like sitting by the window, but on a 13 hour flight it's good to be able to get up and stretch your legs or go to the bathroom without having to wake up some stranger to let you out of your box.

No matter how good the seat, after 8 hours I want to get off. I reach a state of panic right around the 8 hour mark. Time is not passing. I will be stuck here forever. There is no escape. I usually calm myself down by attempting to nap or listening to a book on tape.

Suddenly the flight attendants are turning on the lights and coming by with breakfast. It's all over. We'll be landing in less than an hour. But that panic time stays with me convincing me that there's no need to make that trip again for a long while.

As I left the plane I passed through business class, with it's leather seats that reclined without putting you in your neighbor's face. There were slippers on the floor and single wrapped chocolate nestled in the little tray on the armrest of one chair.

Someday I want to try business class, see how the other half lives.

I leave you today with a quote that might possibly be a paraphrase of something Einstein once said, "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."

Housekeeping

2009-07-31T08:59:00.004+09:00

Hello faithful readers,

I'm back in Japan now and happy to be here. I'll tell you more about my trip home later, but for now I want to draw your attention to a new feature on my blog. Scroll to the bottom of this entry and take a look at the check boxes. This is a great way for me to get feedback from those of you who don't or can't leave a comment. Just click on the box next to "entertained", "indifferent" or "bored" to let me know what you think of that day's entry. Go ahead try it out right now. I'd love to see everyone who reads clicking on those boxes. That way I know you're interested in what I have to say.

Happy days and grand adventures,
Emma.

Another road side attraction

2009-07-29T10:04:00.008+09:00

The world's biggest ball of string, the museum of Pez memorabilia and the desert of Maine fill a special niche in American society. Lovingly called roadside attractions these strange and ludicrous sights give us something to gawk at. They were the only outlet for our inherent voyeurism before the age of high profile super celebrities.

On my last full day in Maine, Mom, Noah and I indulged in this old timey entertainment. We visited the Desert of Maine.

Now shrunk to only 50 acres, this expanse of sand in the middle of the Freeport, Maine woods once measured over 300 acres.

We parked in the shared parking lot between the Desert of Maine campground and the Desert of Maine gift shop. We stopped in the gift shop to pay for our tour and went out through the back door to wait for it to start.

We piled onto the trailer behind the diesel Jeep along with five or six other families from all over the country. An old woman told us the story of the desert.

Thousands of years ago a glacier traveled from Canada into Maine. Then it melted, leaving behind a thick layer of fine sand. Topsoil covered the sand. A farmer made his home there. He was a good farmer and the land flourished under him. When he died his children inherited the farm. They were not good farmers. They worked the land to exhaustion. Then they raised sheep. Sheep eat everything from flower to root.

Patches of sand appeared. As the weeks and months passed the sand spread. Eventually the family had to leave the farm. It had become a desert.

A good business man bought the land and turned it into a thriving roadside attraction. It used to have burro rides and a real camel. Now there are a couple of camel pictures to take your picture with.

The best part of the tour is a single post stuck in the ground and marked at 9 and 10 feet. The tour guide passed around pictures showing a building that used to be a pump house. As the desert spread, the house was buried by sand. The enterprising business man stuck a post on top of the pump house and marked it at intervals to show how many feet of sand were piled on top of the roof.

It was the quintessential roadside attraction - interesting, strange and supported by a large gift shop. If you're ever in Maine with a couple of hours to kill check out the Desert. How can you miss the only desert East of the Mississippi?

I leave you today with a quote from my favorite show, Futurama:

Fry: But you're right. Once you're actually here, it's just a big, dull rock. I guess I just wanted you to see it through my eyes, the way I used to.

Leela: Fry, look. It really is beautiful. I don't know why I never noticed it before

... in having new eyes.

2009-07-23T23:25:00.005+09:00

"Hey, Emma, your ride is here." Dad called from the driveway.

I grabbed my camera from the table and ran outside. The corn saplings bowed in the draft. I snapped picture after picture. Noah's friend Brett dropped two feet to the ground and walked up the field toward me.

His father raised the helicopter a little higher and made for the open lawn at the edge of the field. I stepped back, a little unnerved by the whirling blades. Pete crooked his finger at me. I ran forward, ducking reflexively in fear of the blades.

"I'm going to take you into a hover and see how you do."

We hovered just a few minutes before rising above the trees. I wasn't scared. I was exhilarated. I'd been on a hot air balloon trip. This was nothing like that. The ride was smoother. The helicopter pivoted in the headwind.

Pete had taken the doors off, so when he turned above my friend's to let me take a picture there was nothing but air between me and the grass below.

We flew over my old elementary school, over my high school and finally over my father's office. Later, after we landed Pete said, "I felt like I was in an episode of 'This is Your Life' with Emma."

As we landed, I felt like a movie star. My parents and grandparents were standing in the back yard. My mom snapped picture after picture. The grass flattened beneath us. The rotors slowed and returned to the visible spectrum.

I took off my headset and unhooked my harness. My feet touched solid ground. It was the first time since reaching my parents house that I really felt like I was home.

I leave you today with a quote from Milan Kundera, "Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No. Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

Thar she blows!

2009-07-21T09:57:00.008+09:00

After visiting Roosevelt's cottage, mom and I drove to the very tip of the island. We drove so far that we ran out of road and ended up in the gravel parking lot of the East Quoddy Head Light House.

The lighthouse was pretty but unreachable. We happened to reach that side of the island during high tide which meant there was feet of turbulent water between us and the light.

I was okay with that. Light houses are my mom's thing not mine. Besides, the bay held something more interesting. We saw a couple of families standing on the rocks and pointing out over the water. A pair of porpoises played in the bay. We could see their dorsal fins and their sleek, black backs.

And we heard a sound like a soda can exploding. It was a whale, followed by two whale boats. The whale crested several times. It was the best part of the trip.

I spent the trip back to Maine singing. "I saw a wh-ale. I saw a wh-ale."

When we got back to Lubec we stopped at East Quoddy's sister house the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse. We actually got to walk around that one, but no whales, so I guess it was a draw.

We got some good pictures though.

I leave you today with a quote from John Hope, "We have sat on the river bank and caught catfish with pin hooks. The time has come to harpoon a whale."

Walking softly in Canada

2009-07-17T11:15:00.005+09:00

We drove East, past the Easternmost convenience store and the Easternmost campground to the very spot where the first sunbeam of the new day touches U.S. soil.

We drove over the bridge from Lubec and through the customs checkpoint to Campobello island. Though politically belonging to New Brunswick and thus to Canada, Campobello is a part of America's heritage. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our nation's 32nd president, vacationed on the island and owned a summer "cottage" there.

I say "cottage" because I'm not sure the word really applies to a 33 room house with 18 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms. The house is the main attraction of Roosevelt Campobello International Park but there are other cottages on site as well.

My favorite was Hubbard cottage. The Hubbards were contemporaries of the Roosevelts. Mrs. Hubbard was a concert pianist and the house seems to be designed for concerts. A long Victorian style living room houses the grand piano. Down the hall, an impressive oval window looks out over the Bay of Fundy.

Back in the visitors center we learned about the history of Campobello island and the Roosevelt family. FDR first visited the island with his mother and father when he was only a year old. After his mother died he and his wife Eleanor inherited the cottage. The visitors center housed pictures of the family and even a baseball bat full of pegs given to Roosevelt in honor of his "Walk softly and carry a big stick," comment.

It was a good first-visit to Canada.

I leave you today with a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, "Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life."

James and the giant blueberry

2009-07-17T09:48:00.005+09:00

"Do you want to turn around?" My mother asked as we sped down US #1 through Columbia Falls, Maine.

"Yes. I have to take a picture of that."

We turned around and found an empty spot in the dust and rock parking lot. My eyes darted from the blue painted round ship's buoys beached around the edge of the lot, to the red poppies growing in front of the door, to the building, a huge geodesic dome painted the same bright blue as the buoys.

"This is fantastic," I said as I climbed on top of a rock to get a picture.

The sign over the door read Wild Blueberry Land. And that is what we found inside. They sold blueberry pie and blueberry muffins, blueberry honey and blueberry truffles, blueberry butter, blueberry jam and even a couple of cranberry products just for good measure.

Above our heads we could see the triangle-beam forms supporting the structure. At the very apex a disco ball hung above a wooden pentagon.

"Why?" A customer asked.

The clerk didn't know.

One segment of the room was devoted to toys and games. Between the stuffed animals and the bouncy balls a golden throne stood on a small dais beneath a stuffed moose head. Mounted plates held a king's crown and queen's tiara.

I of course sat in the throne, put on the tiara and let my mother take my picture. Though I may never live it down I'll post it here.

I leave you today with the Marin Independent Journal's TV listing for "The Wizard of Oz" movie, "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again."

High above and in between

2009-07-16T09:25:00.005+09:00

Dear faithful readers, stay tuned during the next few days. I've got a couple of adventures to share with you and they're coming at you rapid fire. Happy reading.

Almost every school age child in central Maine has visited Fort Knox at least once. It is a popular field trip destination and a common stop for family day trips. My family did not go there this week.

But we did venture close. Just down the road from the 165 year old fort a new attraction is stealing the show. The Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory opened in 2007. It is the tallest bridge observatory in the world, but there isn't much competition. There are only three others, one in China, one in Slovakia and one in Thailand.

When you shade your eyes and gaze up from the base of the tower, 420 feet looks fantastically high. There are no lights on at the top, but the sun glances like a spotlight off the polished metal. Steel cables stretch like harp strings from tower to bridge, waiting for a giant to pluck them and destroy the world with the reverberation.

Inside you find an elevator and a shaft. Only 8 people at a time are allowed to ride to the top. But once there you can stay as long as you like. The door opens on a view of the river, a sort of warm up for the main event two stories up.

From the observation deck you can see the town of Bucksport, Cadillac Mountain and of course Fort Knox.

I leave you today with a quote from an anonymous wise man, "A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top."

New York's got nothing on this

2009-06-29T23:50:00.015+09:00

I'm in Maine again, visiting my family and stateside friends while Grant is out to sea. I'll be here for a little over a month and I'll keep blogging so you can follow the whole adventure.

Drive through one tiny town, down a country road, and through a slightly larger tiny town. You'll know you're going the right way when you pass a public library the size of a roadside vegetable stand.

The driveway is marked by a discreet sign reading Spalding Enterprises, landscape photography. It says nothing about pizza.

You turn down the drive. A few guests are already clustered under a patio umbrella eating homemade sourdough flat bread. It's raining but they're not going to let that spoil the party. You are greeted by Marian Spalding, a small woman with huge patience. She's a teacher and a town selectman.

You say, "That's impressive."

To your left is a hut, built entirely of glass wine bottles held together with cement. "You know" Marian said, "I asked for a garden gate, so I could get into the garden when the deer fence was up and this is what I got."

You go inside. The heat hits you first. A 900 plus degree pizza oven heats up even the wettest Maine days. The mouths of what seems like thousands of bottles gape at you. You gape back. Never have you seen anything like this outside of a modern art installation.

Doug Spalding stands between a rolling counter and the oven, making pizzas.

Doug Spalding makes chicken pesto pizza while my father looks on.

"Why don't you throw it up in the air?" someone asks.

Doug explains that the crust is hand made with 8 grains and low gluten. "That gluten stuff that you hear everyone complaining they're allergic about, that's what holds dough together," he says. If he spun this dough it would probably break. But the taste is amazing.

Doug adds, "Any idiot can make a round pizza. It takes a real pizzamia to make a heart shaped one."

Listening to Doug speak is like listening to a college lecture given by Robin Williams on uppers. It's usually funny, often educational and almost always exhausting.

He pops a pizza into the oven and immediately starts making another, talking all the while. Pesto chicken, BBQ pulled pork with gouda and shrimp scampi with asparagus pizzas take shape under his hands as he explains about the home grown, locally raised ingredients. Even the wine comes from a local winery, a place called Bartlett wines that makes the best wild blueberry wine you'll ever taste.

As each pizza comes out of the oven, one of the guests rings a bell and sings the pizza toppings to the tone of its knell. Even the bells here are little works of art. There are two made out of an old dive tank and two more made from the workings of a clock.

The bells ring, the banter flies, the bottle hut smells like a gourmet kitchen and the mist falls silent on the party.

Who would have thought you'd find the best pizza and the best company in the world in a little glass hut in Saint Albans, Maine?

For more information on the Bottle Hut pizza oven visit http://dougspalding.com/ouroven and http://www.dougspalding.com/gardengate.

For more information on Bartlett wine visit http://www.bartlettwinery.com/.

Take a sad song and make it better

2009-06-23T21:53:00.004+09:00

If you don't understand what this post is about please read this earlier blog -
http://ameri-pan.blogspot.com/2009/02/oh-nicky-boy.html

The day was hot and humid. Keri and I pushed through the crowds of Komachi-Dori. Past the rickshaw guy and right across from the Amish cafe there's a single tori gate set amid the trees. It was a blessing to venture out of the sun and into the cool shade.

We had found Tsurugaoko Hachimangu, a particularly impressive Shinto shrine. We climbed the long flight of stairs to the main building stopping now and then to take pictures.

At the top I looked around. "Do you think I should put it on one of those?" I asked Keri, as I pointed to a stand covered in votive plaques known as ema.

"Yeah, they have more inside too."

We passed inside the main building. A large stand, more than six feet tall and as long as a pickup truck, stood on either side of the offering box. Behind a screen we could just make out the movements of a priest in prayer.

The stand closest to us was covered in hundreds, maybe thousands of ema, all hung one atop the other as many as six deep. I had seen ema stands all over Japan, but none had been so crowded as this one. Wishes to the gods were written in Japanese, English and French. Some people had just draw pictures or written their names.

I approached the low table in front of the stand and pulled a strange assortment from my purse - a roll of clear tape, a battered and much folded envelope and a 500 yen piece. I dropped the small offering box and took an ema in trade. I looked at the stylized picture of a horse, then flipped it over to reveal pale, unblemished wood.

I taped the fragment of shirt to the ema, then brushed my fingers against the fold at the bottom. I looked at the stand. An empty spot was hard to find. Finally I reached up, as high as I could reach to hang the ema on top of five others. When I stepped back I picked it out easily. It was the only patch of white against the wood.

I paused as we walked out of the building to look over my shoulder at the fragment of shirt, lost now in a sea of wishes.

"Are you okay?" Keri said.

"Yeah."

I leave you today with a quote from Marie Beyon Ray, "Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late."

Little Buddha Blessed

2009-06-09T15:18:00.005+09:00

When I talked to my mother on Sunday she reminded me to blog about my adventures this weekend. I've been trying ever since to write something. But I just don't want to. I'd rather tell you this instead.

Grant was home this weekend. He got in on Friday and pulled out again on Tuesday morning. That day I woke up early for no reason, called the base number that lets me check what time the ship leaves, and headed down to the pier. I had never watched the ship pull out before. In the past it always seemed like such a sad thing.

The day was gray. I wound my fingers through the chain link fence at the pier, trying to decide if I could see Grant among the sailors manning the rails. He was supposed to do it this time. It turned out he was on shift, so he had to stay below. But I didn't know that at the time.

I moved further down the shore, to a place with a chest-height fence so I could see half the boat instead of just the stern. A mother came up beside me carrying a little girl. The child wore a pink romper. She had a solemn face and chubby fists and she was barefoot.

Her mother set her down in the grass. For a long moment the little girl stared at her feet curling her toes slowly and then uncurling them again. Every small thing that caught her eye became the object of deep study.

Her face stayed serious, like a gourmet taking the first bite of what might turn out to be an excellent dish. I longed to see her laugh. Finally she smiled. She wasn't pretty, not at all. But she was beautiful.

Later, as the ship was pulling out I crouched to give my legs a rest. She crouched too and began selecting rocks from the edge of the grass. She handed me two, each one dropped gently from her chubby fist to my outstretched palm.

I looked at them carefully. They were both perfectly normal rocks. Both gray. Both dirty on the bottom. Both lacking any characteristic to set them apart from the others ranged at her feet.

But these were the ones Gwen gave me and so these were the ones I put into my pocket.

I carried them in my pocket all day and emptied them onto my dresser at night. I plan on keeping them. I don't know why.

I leave you today with a quote from Phillip J. Fry of my favorite T.V. show Futurama, "Why aren't we out doing everything I ever dreamed of?"

A picture is worth a thousand

2009-05-28T16:25:00.003+09:00

You've read the stories, now see Japan for yourself. I may have mentioned that my friend Amy is a photographer. She has a new web site:

http://amyarvinphotography.smugmug.com/

where you can see and order pictures she has taken in Japan (and lots of other places).

Go ahead. Check it out.

I leave you today with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, "I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers."

We must be over the rainbow.

2009-05-27T09:53:00.008+09:00

When Grant is home we go on weekend adventures. Now that he's out to sea the girls and I have shaken things up. We go on weekday adventures instead. That's right folks, we're rebels.

The sun was hot on our necks as we walked ten minutes from the train station to the gates of Flower World. It was easy to find. All we had to do was follow the flowers painted on the light posts - poppies for summer, cosmos for winter.

Just before the entrance we stopped to let Amy, my photographer friend, put her camera together. While we waited I peered under the log arches at the color riot raging ahead.

I never knew that poppies came in so many colors - pink, orange, red, white. Or in so many varieties - some had single layers of petals, others dozens, like a rose or the petticoats of a 19th century debutante.

We took a circuitous route through the field, stopping now and then to take pictures. On the hill above a train chugged by carrying a load of sightseers.

In case you were wondering, the yellow flowers spell out Kurihama, the name of the town.

Eventually we climbed the stairs on the other side of the field. At the top a most unusual sign met us.

"Apparently," I said, "Godzilla is that way."

We followed the path further up the hill, in search of the great lizard. Even while looking for Godzilla we stopped now and then to look at the flowers and take pictures of caterpillars. This, I believe, is the fundamental difference between men and women.

We did find him about half-way up the hill. He towered over the children's play area. Evidently, since his last movie Godzilla has been moonlighting as a slide. Who knew?

I lost track of how many hills we climbed and descended, but at the top of one was a bell, with two pulls. A line of older Japanese rested on benches in the shade. One man saw us staring at the bell and came over to ring it for us. Then he let Missy pull the other cord. It made a jerky tinny sound. We laughed, snapped pictures, thanked him.

More hills, up and down in the noon sun. We talked about the beach, as people do when hot and wishing they were there. Up and down again. I didn't mind the ups so much, but the downs made me feel like I would fall forward and never stop until I reached the sea.

Finally we reached the end of the park and saw the little train, pink as bubble gum sitting at the bottom of the last hill.

It wasn't until I got home that I noticed the sun burn.

I leave you today with a quote from Baz Luhrman's famous graduation speech, "If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it."

Now you see me. Now you don't.

2009-05-20T07:45:00.004+09:00

I realized I had not written in a while. I didn't think it was a big deal. But then I started getting e-mails. "Where are you?", "Where have you gone?" Everyone seems quite upset by the idea that I may have disappeared.

Well, ta-da! Good trick, huh? I'm back.

Really I didn't go anywhere. There just hasn't been much to say. Grant went out to sea for a little over a week and then came back for a few days and now is gone again. Most of the drama in my life recently has centered around that. But because of OPSEC, otherwise known as Operational Security, I'm not supposed to post about when or where he's going. This means that all my whining about only getting to spend a few days with him, and all our scrambling to get everything ready went un-blogged-about. Lucky you.

Anyway, I suppose I'm back now. Grant won't be accompanying me on my adventures for a while, but I have managed to wrangle up a small group of friends who are willing to come along with me. They're all GW wives, most have husbands who are Nukes, which means on a certain level we all understand each other. We don't, however, know each other very well at this point. I'll let you know how it goes.

Actually, that reminds me of a story. The other day Grant got restless. We ended up going for a long walk around base at about 8 o'clock at night. When we got close to home, instead of turning left onto our street Grant said, "You want to go to the mini mart?"
"Sure, do you need something."
"No I'm just not ready to go home yet."

So we went, down the dark road with tall warehouses and even taller hills on either side, through a tunnel that echoed our steps and past some buildings we had never been inside and probably never will.

Just as were stepping into the crosswalk a man and woman passed it on the other side of the street. Grant raised a hand in greeting. The man stopped, said in a low voice "I have to talk to this guy."

After we safely navigated the crosswalk Grant shook hands with the man who evidently, works with him on the ship. Then he introduced his wife, Missy. She just got here the day before yesterday. They were living in the Navy Lodge. They would get their apartment on Monday.

"So you're a GW wife." I said. "Do you have any friends here yet."
"No," she answered with a soft southern twang, "I'm all alone on the this great big island."
"Not anymore," I said. "Would you like to come to dinner on Thursday, a few of us get together once a week and have dinner."

I think she walked away a little happier. So did I.

I remember what it was like, to be here all alone. They tell you you're not alone, all the people you meet in your first few days of orientation and paperwork, but they all work here. It's their job to say those sorts of things. It's about the alone-liest thing in the world to be in a barely furnished apartment, half a world away from your family, with your husband somewhere in the middle of the ocean, and not a friend in sight. You feel like you're out to sea yourself. Alone on a raft somewhere, sending messages by bottle and carrier pigeon.

I hope she likes us.

I leave you today with a quote from Ellen Metcalf, "You have to recognize when the right place and the right time fuse and take advantage of that opportunity. There are plenty of opportunities out there. You can't sit back and wait."

Zen in the Art of Archery

2009-05-05T21:07:00.004+09:00

Japan has a ritual for everything. A major element of Japanese culture is the belief that to do a thing well is to do it exactly the way the masters have done it for thousands of years - no variation.

This weekend, quite by accident, we observed one of those rituals in action.

While visiting Engakuji Temple we saw a group practicing Kyudo, the ancient Japanese art of archery. There are two kinds of Kyudo, contemplative and competitive. Since we were in a Zen temple I'm pretty sure they were practicing the contemplative kind.

The archers flowed into place, lifted their bows in a complex series of gestures, drew and released once or twice without shooting, and finally drew and shot. All of this was done in complete silence except for the hiss of the string and the thump of the arrow hitting the target.

Aside from a couple in Japan for the International Table Tennis Championships our little group were the only observers. We found ourselves barely whispering. Amy flinched every time her camera made its shutter noise. A bird off to our left didn't seem to recognize the solemnity of the occasion. He grumbled and screeched.

The archers, men and women dressed in white smocks and black pants that widened to bells at the ankles, didn't seem to notice. They flowed forward, shot, receded. I felt like I was caught in an eddy, spinning in slow circles while the arrows flew.

The bows were as tall as the people and top heavy. The arrow crossed the bow at only one third of it's length instead of across the middle like in Western archery.

After each shot a woman stepped out of the building they were shooting from, slipped on a pair of shoes and walked to the end of the range to collect the arrows. While she did this the archers flowed away and others took their places.

After a couple of cycles, we left our benches and went to explore the rest of the temple.

If you want to know more about Kyudo click on the purple link near the top of this page.

I leave you today with a quote from the Buddha, "As a fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts."

You don't have to be my friend, but is it so much to ask

2009-05-03T12:03:00.002+09:00

I'm not very good at making friends. Nobody is exactly sure why this is. I'm personable enough. I don't stink as far as I know. I'm just not very good at striking up a conversation with someone unless there's a notebook and a list of questions between us.

For this reason, I have been bugging Grant to introduce me to the wives of some of the guys from work. As friend making strategies go this one is pretty good because these women will be left alone at the same time that I am and our husbands will be on similar schedules so it's easier to do things together.

Unfortunately, it seems like every woman here either has children or desperately wants to have them as soon as possible. While I have nothing against children, I don't want any at the moment and infants and small children tend to cramp the exploring spirit. That's well and good for those that want it. But I need someone to explore with.

Well the other day Grant got called in to work to fill in for someone with a minor medical emergency. On his way there he ran into Nick and his wife Amy.

When he came home a couple of hours later he said, "I found you a friend."

"Yay!"

We had dinner with them on Thursday. I'm pretty sure I have a new friend now. She's 20-something, college educated, and has no short term plans for children. She's also a photographer. Between us we should have some very well documented adventures.

And speaking of adventures, she and Nick went on an adventure with us this weekend. More on that later.

I leave you today with a Chinese proverb, "Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet."

Sea Paradise, see paradise run, run paradise ...

2009-04-22T10:04:00.005+09:00

Monday Grant's division started shift work. He leaves at 2:30 p.m. and comes home a little after midnight - everyday. In theory, there will be no more adventures because there will be no more weekends. Of course - you never can tell - so stay tuned.

On Sunday we boarded the train. We had to stand, as usual. Sunday is a busy travel day and Yokosuka is one of the busier stations. Grant held on to the hand bar. I hung on to Grant. The train played its little song and we were off.

We stopped in Kanazawa. A charming little city with a giant gorilla watching over everything from the rooftop of what appeared to be a Pachinko parlor. We crossed the street, looking for the Seaside line and finally found it, two stories above our heads. The entire train track was suspended on pillars above the ocean.

We were at the beginning of the line, which is always comforting because it means the only direction to go is the right direction. The wonderful thing about trains in Japan is they will take you anywhere. The bad thing is sometimes anywhere isn't where you meant to end up.

From the platform we could see a cable stayed bridge, like the one in Boston, and a glass pyramid, like the one at the Louvre only not transparent. I pointed it out to Grant. It was both beautiful with the sun glancing of the glass angles and architecturally surprising. People don't normally go around building pyramids out of glass.

A couple of train stops later I saw the coils of a roller coaster. "That's where we're going." I told Grant. "See the roller coaster."

We planned to spend the day at Sea Paradise, an aquarium and ocean themed park on a small island in the great, and I was beginning to think endless, city of Yokohama.

The train dropped us off at the footbridge that led to the entrance. The sun was warm enough to be almost hot. The ocean sparkled on either side of us. We held hands across the bridge. Our first sight upon entering the park was an old fashioned merry-go-round playing tinkly merry-go-round music.

I looked at the map the information booth girl had given us. The pyramid was labeled "Aqua Museum." There, about $90 bought us unlimited rides and access to all the aquarium shows and exhibits. Much cheaper than Sea World.

The aquarium had the usual assortment of fish, penguins and crabs. But it also had some unusual animals. Have you ever stood a foot from a fully grown male Walrus? You might think you understand how big these creatures are but trust me you don't. He was at least seven or eight feet long and as big around as four average size people. They also had my favorite underwater animal - sea horses. I got down on the floor like a little kid to peer into the low tank and watch them drift around. "See that pregnant one," I told Grant. "That's a boy sea horse." Sea horses are awesome.

After the aquarium we headed for the rides. Grant was really excited about one in particular called Blue Fall. It was a tall tower with four seats on each of its four sides. We watched as one set of seats was pulled to the top then dropped, stopped, and dropped again.

Grant and I got on, we pulled the seat harnesses down over our heads. The seats rose 107 meters in the air, that's a little over 351 feet or about 36 stories. A sound system played this ridiculous heart pounding music. We had a beautiful view of the bridge and the city. Then a Japanese man's voice counted in English 3-2-1-bye-bye. We dropped. We stopped my heart pounded. I knew it wasn't over. We dropped again. At the bottom I was staggering and laughing. So was Grant.

It took almost ten minutes for us to relax, long enough to walk across the park to the surf coaster, a roller coaster that actually looped out over the ocean. I figured this would be nothing after the Blue Fall. But my stomach still did that fluttery butterfly thing. It was fun.

Lunch and some shopping later Grant convinced me to go on the Blue Fall again. I didn't really want to. For some reason I was scared this time. But we had unlimited tickets and lines were almost non-existent, so I didn't have any good excuse not to.

We harnessed ourselves in. The seats climbed. We had a full view of the park. The voice counted 3-2-1-bye-bye. We dropped, but not in increments. They dropped us the entire 350 feet all at once. I screamed between clenched teeth. This time when we touched ground I was staggering, but not laughing.

We headed for the Viking - you know the ship that rocks you up into the air - which quickly put a smile back on my face. It's my all time favorite ride.

While we were waiting for it to start I heard a little Japanese girl behind me say. "Hello, how are you. This is my dog spot." I turned around and looked at her. She, her two friends, and I, all burst out laughing. They giggled through the entire ride.

We rode the drunken barrels - like the tea cups only the whole platform tilts. Grant spun us so hard I couldn't stop laughing while I begged him to slow us down.

Finally, we rode the merry-go-round.

We crossed the bridge. We got on the train. We went home.

It was a good day.

I leave you today with a quote from my all time favorite author Terry Pratchett in his book A Hat Full of Sky, "Tiffany was not afraid of heights at all. She could walk past tall trees without batting an eyelid ... What she was afraid of, although she hadn't realized it up until this point, was depths."

Shelldor and Cupgar say: Happy Easter

2009-04-12T18:26:00.003+09:00

Oh yeah, me too.

when he was good he was very very good

2009-04-09T10:56:00.004+09:00

I promised to tell you about our base cherry blossom festival, but something more important has come up. So let me just say there were lots of people, of course lots of flowers, food, music, hula dancers etc. Here's a picture.

Now, today I was sitting outside the post office eating my lunch when a woman and her son walked by. They were obviously in the midst of an argument.

"Where are you going?" the mother asked.

"Where do you think." the boy said.

"I want you to wait. How will I find you." the mother said.

"Just call me."

"No."

"I'm not following you around all day." the boy said.

"No," said the mother, "I'm going to follow you."

By this point I of course wanted to slap the child. He was maybe 13 or 14 a hard age for parents and children everywhere. The mother was Asian with an accent that softened the edges of her words even when she was angry. I have to wonder if ethnicity had any effect on the argument. Traditionally, boys and men rule Asian households. The mother is expected to pay even her young son a certain amount of respect. Whether this affected the argument or didn't, I still wanted to slap the little brat.

A few seconds later they came into view again. The boy was headed the opposite direction.

"Where are you going." The mother said.

"Where do you think," said the boy.

"I can't do anything, today." the mother said. "Where are you going."

"I'll meet you where we always meet."

The mother turned around defeated and obviously fuming. Much as I wanted to slap the kid and tell him to watch his mouth. I also wanted to comfort the mother.

"It will get better." I wanted to tell her. "Teenagers are hard. But someday he'll grow up and realize how much you mean to him."

Of course, I didn't say this. I didn't say anything. I just balled up my sandwich wrapper and threw it away. Then I went into the post office to collect the package my own mother had sent from the other side of the planet.

I couldn't say anything to them, but I can say this to you. Children, be good to your parents. You don't know yet how much they will mean to you.

Even if you're a grown up, be good to them, you won't have them forever.

I leave you today with a quote from Lois McMaster Bujold, "You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.

I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely ...

2009-04-08T09:41:00.008+09:00

The cherry blossoms are in full glory. They explode on trees that, until that moment, looked dead. The pink-white flowers cling to the branches and fall like soft snowflakes with every breath of wind. If you haven't seen this then, my friend, you have not lived.

The tradition of cherry blossom festivals is nearly as old as Japan itself. As far back as the tale of Genji, written in the 11th century but set much earlier, the Japanese have attended festivals and viewing parties in honor of those small pink-white flowers. This year Grant and I joined them.

On Saturday we took the train to southern Yokohama to visit the Shomyoji Temple. The gate of the temple stood in the middle of a residential area, near a cemetery and a couple of hundred km from the beach.

People clumped around the entrance wielding cameras. I stopped with them. Just inside the gate was an amazing tree - it stood only about four feet tall and was weeping bunches of flowers, some baby pink, some magenta.

Behind that a corridor of cherry blossom trees led to the temple's inner gate. Pink lanterns hung between the trees, offsetting the pink in the flowers. Beneath the flowers a crowd swarmed. The air smelled like candy and baked goods.

Grant and I set off through the throng. The corridor was lined with restaurants, tiny craft shops, and a single small shrine with a small cherry tree bending over it. Vendors had set up booths in every available patch of land between the trees.

At the end we found the main gate, guarded by two impressive statues behind wooden screens. Behind that, we saw a beautiful red, arch bridge. The kind you expect to see in traditional Asian gardens. A red carpet cut down the middle and ropes blocked off both sides. We thought some kind of ceremony must be coming, though we never saw it.

Instead we walked around the koi pond to the main temple building, where the more pious climbed the stairs to ring the bell and pray. A hill to one side and field to the other were covered with blankets and picnickers. And over their heads these flowers, more beautiful than any I had ever seen, and the petals blowing on the breeze.

We had our own cherry blossom festival here on base - more about that tomorrow.

I leave you today with a quote from Gunther Klinge a Bavarian who wrote in the ancient Japanese Haiku style:

"Who are we really

from one minute to the next?

Cherry flowers fall."

It's a small world after all

2009-03-28T21:40:00.010+09:00

"It's amazing," I said to Grant as we walked through a part of Yokosuka we had never seen nor even knew existed, "how adaptable people are."

"Humans are like cockroaches," he said. "They can live anywhere."

Today we traveled two train stops over in search of a park that known for its 1000 cherry trees. For the next week or so it's cherry blossom season here.

The view at this park is supposed to be spectacular. I wouldn't know since we never made it. Whether the day was more or less of an adventure because of that is up for debate. You might recall the old not the destination but the journey proverb.

Leaving the train station we headed in the direction we thought the park might be, based on my memory of one Japanese-labeled map I saw on the Internet the other night. We walked past some pretty strange buildings: a square glass cube in the middle of a traditional looking neighborhood, a pink two-story with a statue in an alcove, and a commercial building only three feet wide. The last is common here, but they strike us every time we see them.

We wandered for hours, just looking at Japan, at Yokosuka. At the top of the hill we found a beautiful grocery store, the upscale shiny-floor kind with isles of fresh fruit and gourmet items. That was strange. Most grocery stores in Japan are in the basements of shopping centers. They're small and pretty basic, with linoleum floors and fluorescent lighting.

On the other side of the hill we found an explanation. Without meaning to, we had wandered into the ritzy part of town. The houses were wide. They had yards, real yards with grass and flowers and a place to keep the dog. Some even had parking spaces.

In a country the size of California supporting 2 percent of the global population, space is the ultimate luxury.

We wandered on until the highway stopped us. Then we turned around and headed home. No park for us.

I answered Grant's cockroach comment with, "Remember the first day we went out on town together. We were fascinated everything was amazing. Now we walk around saying well if we find something interesting ..."

I have moved from one side of the world to the other. But my personal world is still very small. Ask me where I live and I'll tell you Yokosuka, Japan, but really I live in a tiny piece of Yokosuka, extending only eight or ten streets in any direction.

It makes me wonder - I lived in Maine for the first 18 years of my life. What did I miss?

I leave you today with a quote from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, "Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected."

El que habla dos lenguas vale por dos

2009-03-22T21:12:00.002+09:00

The long train ride to Odawara made us tired, so when a Japanese man outside the train station said "hello" to us in English we almost walked on by. Often these people are trying to sell you something. This man was not.

"Please, can you tell me where you are from."

We told him Yokosuka.

"Ah, Yokosuka."

"I visited your country three years ago. I would like to return to your country many times because it is very big." He stretched his arms wide. The letter v is a hard one for many Japanese so very came out bery.

He went on to tell us that he was 65, had worked hard for one company his whole career and now was living the good life on a pension. He started learning English six years ago. I complemented him on how well he spoke, but he demurred, claiming his English wasn't very good at all. We all insisted that really it was and we understood him perfectly.

"I am very glad to hear you say that."

He asked us what states were were from and told us where in the country each of those states were. Grant told him Texas, mostly I think, to challenge his geography skills. He then told us the year Christopher Columbus landed and the year the United States was formed. I told him he could be an American citizen.

He laughed and thanked us for helping him to practice his English.

I think I might have skipped when we walked away.

I leave you today with a quote from somebody or other, "If you can speak three languages you're trilingual. If you can speak two languages you're bilingual. If you can speak only one language you're an American."

Anybody want a peanut.

2009-03-22T19:38:00.007+09:00

The castle had an elephant.

I just wanted to get that out of the way right up front because though I've never been to a castle before I'm pretty sure most of them don't come with elephants. It also had Macaque monkeys but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Finding our way to Odawara castle was easy, all we had to do was follow the tile brick road.

We crossed the street and passed under a bridge to reach the castle park. At the top of the hill we could see a bit of white through the trees. A woman was standing on a step ladder, taking a picture of a just-opening cherry blossom.

The road curved to the left at the top of the hill exposing a small outbuilding directly ahead and, to the right, the castle.

Don't get too excited. The castle at Odawara is just a reconstruction. The original structure was built some 800 years ago. When Emperor Meiji overthrew the Shogunate in 1868 all feudal castles were destroyed in an effort to take power away from the hereditary warrior class.

Ninety years later they built this - a true to original exact replica of the castle destroyed in 1870. At least the outside is exact. The inside has been turned into a museum. The roof affords an unbeatable view of the countryside.

The courtyard has been turned into a sort of miniature carnival. There's a restaurant, a gift shop, and a place to rent samurai costumes and Edo period kimono. My favorite was the girl wearing a kimono, a wide straw hat and a pair of strappy silver high heels.

The elephant had her own little compound, as did the monkeys.

There were even some kiddy rides around the back. Also, the moat had been turned into a garden at some point, so instead of walking over a trench of dirty water you crossed out of the courtyard over little green vegetable plants.

Perhaps my favorite part of the whole thing was what we saw in the little shrine behind the castle. The shrine itself wasn't much, just a couple of buildings with a koi pond and a souvenir stand. But the adjoining garden was hosting a wedding party. I could see the bride dressed up in a traditional red kimono and white headdress. I had never seen a Japanese bride in real life before. I tried to be inconspicuous with my staring but I'm not sure it worked.

One more thing happened on our adventure this weekend, but I think it deserves its own post. So don't touch that dial, we'll be back with more tomorrow, same time same station. This is your faithful tour guide signing out.

I leave you today with a quote from Monty Python,“Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one... stayed up!"

Wholesome even for a King

2009-03-19T12:47:00.006+09:00

At last the sun is shining. We had two solid weeks of rain and wind and cold, but now spring seems to have finally sprung. For the last three days we have had the most gorgeous weather.

On Wednesday I left the house in a long sleeve shirt. On Thursday I wore a tank top with a button down over it. But today - ah, today is tee-shirt weather. And not a moment too soon.

Friday, March 20 is the Vernal Equinox, the official start of spring in the northern hemisphere. Last night, in honor of the season, I did a little interior decorating.

We don't have a garden or even a yard, so I thought this was the next best thing.

I leave you today with a quote from Doug Larson, "Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush." Hang in there New Englanders. Yours spring will come.

Illusions of grandeur

2009-03-14T20:08:00.019+09:00

Yesterday we went to China.

We got started on our adventure a little late because Grant had a test at noon. He's working on getting his degree by taking CLEP tests, otherwise known as College Level Examination Program Tests. He wants to get his degree. He has taken two so far and passed them both. Next up - French.

We met Haji on the train platform around two o'clock and headed to Yokohama. From there we took the subway a couple of stops. It was our first time on the subway which is about the same as the trains except that the stations were underground. We were able to use our train passcards to pay for the trip.

By three we were staring at one of the gates that mark the entrances to China Town. The Chinese have a more extravagant flair than the Japanese - just wait until you see the temple.

China town smells burned. Like the smell you get when you leave popcorn in the microwave for too long after it stops popping. The smell wore off after a while to be replaced by other smells I couldn't name. One of them might have been duck.

Or maybe lobster - though I'm pretty sure these ones were fake.

"Proof," Haji said. "That lobsters really do grow on trees." He paused and seemed to think about this sentence, then added. "Not that it was ever in question really."

Just staring at the food took up most of our attention. The crowds accounted for the rest. A surprising number of sales people spoke English and tried to use it to get our attention.

I wanted to see three things while we were there - two temples and a museum - but my map was useless so we just wandered around until we tripped over one. Chinatown was big, but not big enough that you'd get lost.

The first temple we found was Kantei-byo, which is dedicated to the god of business. Chinese temples seem to have less vegetation and far more decoration than Japanese temples. Everything that could be carved painted or gilded was. Gold sparkled everywhere and incense was thick in the air.

The second attraction we found was the China Museum, billed as food entertainment, it's often equated with the Ramen Museum we went to a few weeks ago. This was nothing like that. For one there was no feeling of being shot back in time fifty years and trapped on a narrow street with the sun setting above you.

Also it was much, much cooler. The first couple of floors were shopping the second couple were food and a little booth that said information and ticketing. Beside the booth was a little silver turnstile through which we could see two copies of the Mona Lisa hanging side by side next to a clock. The sign under the clock said let's challenge. Obviously we were intrigued. The banner showing a woman being plucked up and eaten by a six foot tall head further fueled our curiosity.

Inside we found this:

and this:

And the aforementioned copies of famous paintings hanging in pairs. This turned out to be a spot the difference exercise. The Mona Lisa, for example, was sticking her tongue out in one version. Evidently, we were in an optical illusion museum.

We found the real fun on the second floor. As we rounded the landing on a flight of stairs we saw this.

Almost all the illusions were flat paintings that looked 3-D enough to interact with. Except for one. A painting of a town that looked flat from the front but turned out to be formed of three protruding triangles. You can see it in the background of the picture below.

Grant said this one looked so real that he didn't want to walk on it to get to the next room.

Once we had escaped the clutches of the huge man we rushed across the street to see the last temple before it closed.

It was the temple of Ma Zhu Miao. They call her Holy Mother of Heaven but she's a sea goddess. Her temple is shaped like a gazebo.

For a 100 yen, an English speaking woman will bring you into the temple and show you to pray in the Chinese fashion. They kneel on square red cushions and press their hands together in front of them. Then they bow three times and then tell the goddess their name and address and what they wish for. I assume this is so the goddess can find them later. There are a lot of people in China after all.

Woody Allen"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown."

Knowledge brings fear

2009-03-05T18:54:00.004+09:00

We didn't just go to the aquarium on Sunday. Staring at all those fish made us hungry, so we stopped at a restaurant on the way back to the train station.

This particular restaurant had caught our eye earlier. It was relentlessly tropical despite the cold and almost rain. It had a thatch roof, picnic tables -all empty - and joy of joys an English language menu. I use the term loosely.

Inside, the decor was just as aggressive - think palm trees and wooden turtles. The booth we sat in had seashells cemented into crevasses in the wall.

They even had little clay tropical and food items under glass in the table.

I ordered a seafood noodle bowl that turned out to be as big as my head. Instead of a spoon I had a ladle. Various kinds of seafood hid under the noodles and creamy sauce. It was like a scavenger hunt.

While we ate, Hawaiian music played loudly over the sound system. One song ended. Before another began a male announcer came on sounding like a NPR radio host. In quiet well pronounced English he explained a little known fact about Hawaiian music. At least, the four of us had never heard it before that day.

Evidently, many classic Hawaiian songs were written in praise of the king. More specifically, in praise of a certain part of his body. The particular song we were about to hear was about an eel.

Haji looked across the table at me, "I'll never listen to Hawaiian music the same way again."

Me either.

Anyway, the food was good.

I leave you today with a quote from Scott Westerfeld, "Sometimes the facts in my head get bored and decide to take a walk in my mouth. Frequently this is a bad thing."

Writing prompt

2009-03-04T19:28:00.003+09:00

This week Writer's Digest sent me a writing prompt: If you could take a trip anywhere in the world where would it be and why?

Here is my answer:

If I could go anywhere, I would go, to a broken down farmhouse covered in snow, where the sunset glows over silhouette trees, and the voice of the wind echoes through the eaves. Though I fear the cold and I loath the snow, there's no place I would rather go, than that quiet spot in that rambling field, where you wonder if summer was ever real. Though I love blue skies and the summer breeze, I’d trade the sun if I could see, the yard with the icicle-dripping trees. To live abroad, to explore, to roam, has taught me this - to value home.

photo by Sue Potvin

If anyone feels moved to write their own response feel free to post it here, or e-mail it to me at read.read.rose@gmail.com.

I leave you today with a quote from Dorothy Gale, "I love you all, and - oh, Auntie Em - there's no place like home!"

water, water every where

2009-03-01T19:10:00.013+09:00

Success: We made it to the aquarium today. Nobody got lost. We even added an extra adventurer to our happy band.

From the train station it was only a three minute walk to the aquarium but there was a four lane road between us and it. Fortunately, the city planners had foreseen our issue. I spotted a sign that said Enoshima Aquarium and pointed down a flight of stairs. The stairs led to a tunnel which passed under the street and let out across the courtyard from the aquarium.

Admission was 2000 yen each and the place was pretty packed. I guess there's not much else to do on a rainy afternoon. I could try to explain what we saw inside, but it might be more effective to just show you.

A tidal pool with actual tides.

A huge viewing tank with rays, sharks and puffer fish.

Some colorful coral.

And the coolest fish I've ever seen. This one is called a Bluefish Sea Robin.

They also had king crabs with leg spans as wide as I am tall.

And these charming creatures.

Yes they look like sea cockroaches. These were only a couple of inches long but the ones in the tank beside them were over a foot. They're a kind of isopod. The giant ones are are sometimes eaten in Tiawan. And you thought lobsters were creepy looking.

The best part of the aquarium was the jelly fish room. You couldn't help but feel peaceful when you looked at the glowing blue water with these creatures wafting through it. Check this out.

And this.

but this is the coolest thing ever, a jellyfish that changes color as it swims, like a little LED creature.

Nature rocks.

I leave you today with a quote from Animal Crossing, "Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks."

A funny thing happened on the way to the aquarium

2009-02-28T20:25:00.005+09:00

We planned to go to the aquarium. But the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.Yes, awry is definitely where our plans, and Grant, went today.

Grant, Thomison and I headed to the train station around 11:30 this morning. We had two transfers to make, one in Ofuna and another in Fujisawa.

We successfully made it to Ofuna. All three of us got of the train and headed for the next platform. A couple of people ran past us as we were descending the stairs, trying to catch the train before the door shut.

"Is that our train?" Thomison asked.
"Yeah." I said, and stopped walking, the train was making its the-doors-are-closing-now-so-tough-luck noise, we would have to wait three minutes for the next train.

Grant had other ideas.

He barrelled past me and slammed through the closing doors onto the train. He was barely inside when the train began to move. He turned and look through the window at us. We smiled and waved. He waved back.

"He'll wait for us at the next stop." I told Thomison. "Why would you do that?"
"I have no idea. He just barreled through."

We waited three minutes, boarded the next train and got off at Fujisawa - no Grant. We walked up and down the platform looking for him - no Grant. We went back to Ofuna thinking he must have immediately gone back to find us - no Grant.

By this time I was very annoyed. Thomison wasn't too thrilled either.

Two hours later I was cold, tired and too worried to be angry. Was he lost? Did he know how to get home? Had he decided to run away forever? Would he live through the scolding I would give him when he did finally get home? All these questions tore at me.

Finally we decided to head home. He could be anywhere. Freezing on the platform wasn't helping anything.

It turned out he'd gotten fed up and gone home an hour earlier. When I got home (Thomison made a detour to get some food) he was waiting for me with an apology note and a glass full of purple flowers. Evidently he had gotten off at the wrong stop and missed us on the way back.

Then and there we made a contingency plan in case we should ever get separated again.

Tomorrow we're going to the aquarium. I hope.

I leave you today with quote by Barbra Hall, "The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn't matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark," though I recomend waiting for the next train.

Voyage to Brobdingnag, Japan

2009-02-22T23:17:00.009+09:00

No adventure this week. Grant was sick. But do not be discouraged dear readers. I held something back from last week which I will now share with you:

In typical Japanese fashion Harajuku - the fashion capital, is next to the Meji Shrine - the biggest and, so far, most impressive shrine in Japan.

Only a few steps into the Meji shrine you feel the pressure. It's like the weight of a heavy blanket on your lap, or the press of a loved one's hand against your palm. The hand of God pushes down on your head. You feel rooted, joined to the earth, aware of the soles of your feet in a way you've never been before.

The shrine is massive - and it's massive to scale. It not only covers a lot of ground, but everything in it fills proportionately. The gravel path is like a three lane highway. The arches tower stories above your head. The guide posts bear signs the size of lunch trays. It is most obvious in the lanterns. Usually they would reach perhaps to your waist. These rise over your head. you feel as though you have shrunk. That hand that presses you to the earth has, at the same time, shrunk you.

As you enter the inner shrine golden light bounces off the water at the purification sinks. You almost think such water could cleanse your soul. Through the heavy gates, past the thrown-wide doors, you see the monks moving here and there before the altar. They sweep and dust, moving with a swift sense of purpose. They seem unaware of the people gathered behind the railing to pray or watch. The two teenage girls standing off center seem horribly out of place with their voices raised. You want to shush them, but they are not your people, this is not your place.

Walking past the railings you gaze through the slats. At first, the fire extinguishers hidden to one side jar you. It is the year 2009, you are American, the world has moved on outside the Meji Shrine. You smile.

Back in the courtyard the weight still presses. You look up at the trees. They are made to scale. You are not. You are tiny.

Leaving the gate you feel the urge to embrace the gate post. You don't. You're fingers wouldn't touch; besides, you'd look silly.

The pressure eases as you move further down the path, feet crunching on the gravel. Soon you are speaking at a normal volume and thinking at a normal rate. You are leaving but the hand has left something behind - a little seed of silence deep inside, that even the blare of Takeshita Dori can't touch.

I leave you today with a quote from St. Augustine, "Unless you believe, you will not understand."

Konnichi-wa fashion, sayonara good taste

2009-02-17T10:35:00.006+09:00

How do you know you're in Harajuku, the fashion mecca of Japan? Well that's easy. First look for the balloon decorated archway. That's always a good clue.

Walk under the arch and you will find yourself on Takeshita Dori. Look around. There are stores selling socks and stores selling shoes. There are gothic shops and lolitta shops and gothic lolita shops. And shops selling what you dearly hope are costumes.

The crowd is mostly under 21. Even on a weekday you can't walk faster than a shuffle without running somebody over. But that's okay because you're too busy looking to walk.

There are shops with creepy bunnyies standing guard.

And shops filled with airplanes full of accessories.

The color, the motion and the noise of it all is incredible. You read the shop names ACDC, Make You Happy World, and this:

You are overwhelmed by it, and who would not be. But you are safe here. Even fashion capitols have laws.

You may not understand them all - but they exist.

After walking through once, just staring from side to side, you make a second pass, this time working up the courage to actually enter some of the stores. Most won't allow you to take pictures, so you keep your eyes wide open, hoping the cacophony of colors won't strike you blind.

A second floor level lolita shop is advertising a sale. You go inside. How could you not? The music is deafening. But after you adjust you realize you are hearing "Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go." with a techno beat. It's followed by the theme song from the emperor's new groove, also in techno.

The clothes are classic lolita, all petticoats and ruffles and little girl style in big girl sizes. Well not that big, it is Japan after all. But have you ever seen Alice in Wonderland. Picture that dress on a 20 year old and you get the idea.

Every time you become overwhelmed you walk to the end off the street and out into the rest of the city. Suddenly the world is a couple of decibels quieter. The colors are calmer. You can think. Then your curiosity gets the best of you and you dive again into the madness.

I leave you today with a quote from Mark Twain, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

Love in the time of ramen

2009-02-15T19:19:00.004+09:00

As a reward for reading this blog every week, you my beloved readers, get a special treat. You get a guest blogger. Today's blog is written by my husband, Grant Gallimore. Before I hand it over to him, please consider the word museum as defined by dictionary.com; a building or place where works of art, scientific specimens, or other objects of permanent value are kept and displayed.

Now consider ramen; a bowl of clear soup containing noodles, vegetables, and often bits of meat.

Okay over to Grant.

Ramen is not art. Ramen isn't a scientific specimen, and I'm pretty sure ramen is not what would be considered an item of permanent value (it is however non perishable).

Anyhow, there is a ramen museum and I went there. The museum was a replication of a small part of 1958 Tokyo. If you didn't know, 1958 was the year instant noodles were invented. A big year for ramen I suppose.

The museum had gift shops and vendors all dressed up in period outfits. The entire place was set up to look like it was evening with clouds painted on the ceiling and everything (although you could see the old recessed lighting and smoke detectors) and there were many restaurants, all the vending machine kind. Unfortunately it was terribly crowded and there were long lines at all of the restaurants. Ultimately we were too hungry to wait and ate Japanese Italian food, not so bad. I still want ramen.

We leave you today with a quote from comic author Jeph Jacques, "The quickest way to a man's heart really is through his stomach, because then you don't have to chop through that pesky rib cage."

Be careful what you read, it might come true

2009-02-12T15:07:00.003+09:00

Ever since the printing press really got rolling, books have had a staggering effect on the human psyche. People have written them, read them, banned them, burned them, revered them and ultimately, been changed by them.

Since I moved to Japan I've been reading more than I used to, which, if you knew me before Japan, you know means I read an awful lot. I have hours of free time every day to devote to this - my most favorite pastime.

Today, I was reading a fantasy novel by one of my all time favorite authors. I didn't want to get too wrapped up in anything because Grant was due home any minute. I just wanted to pass the time.

Terry Pratchet is a satirist. His stories take place in a world much like our own, only it's governed by magic instead of science. This particular novel is called SMALL GODS. It's a satirical account of a country guided by an iron-fisted religion and all the hierarchy and hegemony that you would expect to go with it - think Rome during the middle ages. Through a accident of fate, the god of this country is trapped in the body of a tortoise and forced to live on earth among those who think they are his believers.

Near the end of the book, the gods of several nations are bullied by the Tortoise god into issuing two new commandments. Together the gods utter two simple sentences that add up the the most profound philosophical or theological statement ever made.

Here is what they said:

"I: This is Not a Game
II: Here and Now, You are Alive."

I leave you today, with that.

Significance on a Cosmic scale

2009-02-09T08:11:00.006+09:00

"I've never worn a jacket to a theme park before," Grant said to me. We were sitting in a roller coaster car shaped like a frog a couple of hundred feet away from a shopping mall.

Seconds later we were whipped to one side and I was laughing to hard to answer him. What I should have said was, I've never been to a theme park in the middle of the city before. But there we both were at Cosmo World, right in the heart of the busy tourist area of Yokohama, in February.

This is the veiw from the corner in front of the train station. The funny-shaped building on the left is the Yokohama Grand Intercontinental Hotel. It has 24 floors. The Ferris wheel is taller. It's not the tallest in the world, there are about a dozen wheels that are bigger, but don't tell it that. The recording that plays in the capsule throughout the ride still claims it is. And it's not a good idea to argue with something that's holding you 170 feet in the air.

It doesn't have to be the tallest to be impressing. The wheel, which you can see from all over the city, takes fifteen minutes to make a full rotation. It never really stops. Riders jump in and out as the capsules tick by, unstoppable as the wheel of time. Incidentally, they call this wheel the Cosmo Clock, because of the giant digital clock on its face.

It costs 700 yen to ride, but the view is worth the price. From the top you can see the other half of Cosmo World across the river, and behind that Queens Square.

You can also see Landmark Tower, which boasted the fastest elevator in the world until Taipei 101 was built in Taiwan in 2003.

Looking out the opposite window, you can see what looks like a mini golf course on the top of a tall building nearby. Why? Dunno. Welcome to Japan.

The whole city is laid out at your feet.

And that's just the Ferris wheel. There is also the spinning coaster, the diving coaster, the flume ride, a bunch of spinney rides, attractions and kiddy rides, along with a large arcade. All, let me stress this again, in the middle of a busy city. It's really quite spectacular.

The park is free to get in, you just pay for tickets to ride the rides. So we were able to leave half-way through and eat lunch at at a Polynesian place in the mall across the street. The bus boy brought us water and then said, "You are American?"

We answered yes.

"You like Obama?"
Grant thinks he was just flexing his English muscles, but maybe he really wanted to know.

After lunch we rode a few more rides. No lines, no waiting. It is, after all, only the first week of spring. Then we stumbled toward the train station, still dizzy from the Super Planet. It was a good day.

I leave you today with a quote from Anais Nin, "There is no one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person."

Oh Nicky boy

2009-02-05T21:46:00.009+09:00

On Monday we received a package. It was from my uncle - a late Christmas present - and something else. Never in the history of mail has any one package held two such diverse objects.

One was a gift neatly wrapped in paper so pretty that I folded and kept it. The other was a plain white document envelope, with handwriting on the front. We'll come back to that.

The gift was a game called Partini. Think of it as the universal party game. It has charades, guess what I'm sculpting, guess what song I'm humming, describe something using only negative phrasing - basically every party game ever, all rolled into one.

We immediately called as many people as we could reach. A party game is like a challenge asking, How many people can you get to come over and play with you?

We got 5 (plus Grant and I), though one fell asleep on the couch before we actually got around to playing. It was a great time. There was music, laughter and some shenanigans involving a slinky. I'll tell you about it later if you're interested.

But before all that, there was the envelope.

It was a security envelope, the kind with the blue hatch marks on the inside, so I couldn't see what was in it. But I already knew.

I studied the front - delaying having to open it.

It said, "Contents to be placed somewhere of your choosing preferably where it will not be disturbed." In parentheses it said "Take Pictures" and someone had thoughtfully inserted the words "of envelope" between contents and to.

I opened the drawer near my right hip and pulled out a kitchen knife to slit the envelope. Grant watched and said nothing as a pulled out a tiny piece of cloth. It was simpler than I expected, just a two by two inch fragment of white tee-shirt with a bit of the hem still attached along the left hand side.

I rubbed my thumb over the black-marker letters. "Nicholas Wayne Fernandes" I read, "1990-2008"

My youngest cousin had always wanted to travel. Now this little piece of his shirt would have to do it for him. The postal service got it all the way from the East Coast of the United States to Yokosuka, Japan. It's my job to carry it the rest of the way.

Where will I bring it?

I don't know.

Maybe I'll just carry it around for awhile, until I find the perfect spot - someplace green with a view of the sky.

the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul

2009-02-02T15:41:00.011+09:00

"As we approached Ofuna station I glanced out the window and immediately slapped Grant's arm. He looked up and I pointed. The head of a giant, and I mean giant, female Buddha towered over the trees on the side of a hill. "I want to go there." I said."

This weekend, as promised, Grant, Haji and I went to Ofuna.

From the train we could see a crowd working its way down the hill from the great statue.

"Hey Haji, today's not that throw-beans-at-your-dad thing is it."

He shrugged. "I dunno, maybe. That would explain the crowd."

To clarify for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about - In Japan the second of February is considered to be the first day of spring. On the first, To prepare for the coming of spring Japanese families throw beans at demons to drive them away from Japanese homes. Since demons tend to be hard to see and don't stand still so you can aim, the oldest male of the house hold wears a demon mask and prowls around outside, while the rest of the family throws beans at him and yells "Go away demon, come in spring."

At the shrines and temples across Japan, some members of the community are allowed to stand on a platform and throw beans into the crowd below to protect from bad luck in the coming season. The mass of Japanese people coming down the hill as we arrived had just attended that event.

Fortunately, we missed it. I was not anxious to be caught in a bone crushing crowd like we had at the Emperors palace. (note to Mr. Wiers: the low black building behind me was the palace and yes it did look like a conference hall)

We pushed against the last stragglers of the crowd so we could cross the street outside the train station. Safely across, we stopped to look up at our destination. From where we stood we could see only her face and headdress.

After a false start, we found this:

And followed it to a checkpoint at the base of the steepest paved hill I had ever seen. A Japanese family giggled and tilted as they tried to walk down the thing without overbalancing.

We climbed the mountain, paid our $300 yen entrance fee, and allowed a guard to lead us to the base of the stairs. He tried just gesturing a couple of times but the stupid gaikokujin had to be led since we didn't speak Japanese enough to know he was saying, "The Kanon Statue is that way."

From the foot of the stairs it seemed the lady was looking down at us, waiting for us to climb up and meet her. It's bad form to say no to the goddess of mercy so we climbed. To give you a sense of how truly massive this statue is look at the picture above. The man you see silhouetted in black is standing at the top of the stairs, the statue is about 200 feet back from the top of the stairs.

Unlike the Great Buddha, she is only a bust, she has no legs to fold in meditation, no hands to form the meditation mudra, but you need only tip your head back and look at her face to see that she is meant to be mediating.

We followed the path around the statue to some scaffolding at her back. Climbing a few steps we were able to go inside the statue. It was nothing like entering the Great Buddha, where he was dark and basic, she was bright, with white wash covering her cement skin. It was like stepping into a cool building with only one oddly shaped room.

As we watched a Japanese man threw a coin in the offering box and knelt to pray. It struck me that he was inside the lady praying to a statue of the lady. And that struck me as both strange and beautiful.

Outside again we stopped to take more pictures.

Then made our way down another little side path which led us down some stairs. Halfway, we stopped to watch a animated little girl dart forward, ring the prayer bell, bow her head quickly then look at her mother as if to say, "I did it, you see, I spoke to the gods and I rang the bell and everything."

When they had gone we looked around to make sure no one else was waiting to make their devotions and then stepped forward to peak through the square window at the space the monks used for meditation.

While Haji was still trying to take a picture of the ceiling fixture through the glass, I went back and put my hands on the bell pull. Up close, I could see the cloth was worn to bursting where thousands of hands had grasped and pulled. The fabric was faded and smooth beneath my fingers. I wanted to ring the bell, just to hear the pure sound of its echo. But I didn't. This was not my temple; these were not my gods. My hands dropped. I listened to the silence where the toll could have been.

Further down the stairs we found a pillar with the words "May peace prevail on earth" written on it in several languages. And across from that a garden lantern with glass lenses over the face. Beside it, a monument read:

"The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima brought death to hundreds of thousands of citizens. The flame taken from that conflagration, "burning in deep-seated pain in memory" of those who were killed has been kept burning in Hoshino-mura Village in Fukuoka Prefecture."

"This flame was lit from that flame and is placed here as a symbol of our yearning for lasting peace."

Behind the lantern was an alter bearing two fragments of masonry, one from Hiroshima, the other from Nagasaki. The structure behind that drowned under thousands of peace cranes.

I leave you today with the stones of dead cities and a quote from Stephen Ambrose, "The past is a source of knowledge and the future a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future."

Winner

2009-01-30T09:21:00.006+09:00

You may remember that in my post about Sankeien garden I said that whoever could tell me the name of the Bonsai tree in the picture would get a prize.

The first (and in fact only) entry came from my father who correctly named it ophiopogon japonicus nana or Monkey Grass, a plant native to Japan and often used as decoration in larger Bonsai designs.

As a prize dad will recieve this:

A kokeshi doll of a sumo wrestler. Kokeshi are a Japanese traditional art form carved out of wood and often brightly painted.

You too could win a prize. All you have to do is answer the questions I ask. It's that easy.

I leave you today with a quote from Dianne Feinstein, "Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recomend it."

Sugar House Rules

2009-01-28T09:19:00.004+09:00

When we arrived in Panama MIL had a whole list of things she wanted to do with us while we were there. Predictably, we didn't get to all of them, but we managed to do two or three every day. Early in the week she talked to Jose about bringing us to see the sugar factory.

Now I want to do a little exercise with you. Think of the word factory. Envision one. Perhaps first you see smoke stacks, hung with streamers of smoke. The building is long and low, probably made out of metal or even brick. Go inside your mental factory, through the heavy metal doors. What do you see? Heavy machinery, conveyor belts, assembly lines. You hear the overwhelming sound of motion, people and machines all running together. Now because this is a sugar factory perhaps it smells sweet. Maybe the workers wear apron and hairnets. Someone hands you a sugar cube, small and white and clean. You lick it - sweet.

Before we go on - remember, Panama is a third world country.

Early Thursday morning we heard "Creeese" called softly from the area of the front porch. Jose was there to take us to see the factory.

We walked together down the dirt road in the early 75-degree cool of the morning. Before we reached the bus stop we took a right, down an even narrower dirt road - really more of a track - wide enough for only one truck at a time to bounce down.

Jose turned right again, this time onto grass, and this is what we saw.

A particularly pretty Panamanian house. We walked around it, passing between the house and a shed with a couple of small parrots hanging around outside. Evidently they were pets.

Jose stopped to reset the stool for this fighting cock. It had fallen over, making his string-shackle uncomfortably short. And here was our first view of the sugar factory.

Under a tin roof, three men and two cows worked to wring juice from the sugar cane. The cows were tied together at the horns to keep them from getting out of sync. The big one was on the outside, the smaller one on the inside, both connected to the revolving arm of the machine - if you can use that word to describe something made entirely of wood. The man in the yellow shirt (below) followed them around, whipping them occasionally with a string tied to a stick.

Meanwhile, two men fed stalks of sugar cane into the rolling gears. They would feed the same piece three or four times, until all the liquid had run down the chute and into a large plastic water butt. When they started new stalks yellow-shirt would whip the cows and call out - making them run.

We watched this process for several minutes, fascinated. And Grant and I bought six cakes of the finished sugar from the woman who owned the house. They cost us a dollar. If anyone wants one just let me know. I'll mail one to you.

We left, promising to return at nine when they started boiling the cane juice.

After breakfast we returned as promised. A little boy, probably not much older than ten, had taken over from yellow-shirt. When it was time to start new cane he whipped the cows with gusto and set them trotting.

Smoking billowed from low metal tub where the juice was boiling, bearing only passing resemblance to our smoke stack streamers. The smell was sticky-sweet, almost enough to make you feel a little sickly. And the heat was intense.

The heat didn't seem to bother this little guy, who next to the stone with gum in his hair and looked disinterestedly at us every now and then.

When we left we thanked the lady of the house. She had given us a whole new definition of the word factory.

I leave you today with a quote from Stephen Wright, "Last week the candle factory burned down. Everyone just stood around and sang Happy Birthday."

Sankeien Sunday Stroll

2009-01-27T09:08:00.008+09:00

A bit of business before we start today's story. If you want to see all the pictures from our trip to Panama in one convenient location. Click here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/read.read.rose/Panama#

Okay, story time.

On Saturday I opened the door to find the Kanto, the advertising rag run by the Stars and Stripes, laying on the mat. This was nothing new. The Kanto appeared at our door every week, though there seemed to be no system for when it would appear. As usual I threw it on the floor inside and continued out to start my errands for the day.

When I came back a few hours later I picked the paper up off the floor and started to read. Most of the Kanto is useless to us because it targets several bases in Japan, so most of it is inapplicable to us. But the front page can be fun. Usually some freelance writer covers an event or attraction happening over that week or month.

"Look, Grant, this garden place looks pretty. Oh, and they're having a bonsai exhibit. Too bad we can't see it."

"Why not."

"It ends tomorrow."

"We could go tomorrow."

"Really?"

"There's no reason why we couldn't."

And that is how Grant, Haji and I ended up staring at a train map around 10 o'clock on Sunday morning trying to figure out the quickest way from Yokosuka to Negishi station. We were already on the train when said map staring occurred. We knew we were going the right direction, what we didn't know was when to get off. There's a moral in that somewhere.

Anyway, we decided we needed to transfer at Ofuna. As we approached Ofuna station I glanced out the window and immediately slapped Grant's arm. He looked up and I pointed. The head of a giant, and I mean giant, female Buddha towered over the trees on the side of a hill. "I want to go there." I said. And next Sunday we will, so stay tuned.

We got to Negishi without incident. Then came the tricky part. My directions said we were supposed to take the bus to the garden. None of us had ever taken the bus and upon arrival in Japan we had been cautioned that while the trains were pretty easy the buses were a source of great confusion to the uninitiated.

So we walked. The map on the back of the pamphlet I had printed out showed only major roads, but between that and Haji's iPhone GPS thingy we managed.

The garden was worth the 30 minute walk. It was designed by a wealthy businessman called Sankei Hara. He liked to reconstructed historic buildings and stick them in is garden. It was opened to the public in 1906. Even in winter the place is beautiful. The Japanese have this ability, which most Americans lack, of creating gardens that are beautiful all year round.

Plum trees near the South entrance. We are just beginning the plum blossom viewing season.

Grant and Haji at the entrance to the inner garden.

A cruddy picture but a cool story. This lantern is said to have saved a man's life. He stepped aside just as his assassin was swinging a sword. The sword ended up buried in the lantern instead of the man.

"Look Grant," Haji said. "An ancient Japanese bus stop."

The view over the lake was really spectacular.

Tee-hee, Haji hates having his picture taken. Shh, don't tell him.

Some ladies leaving an event held on the grounds. It always makes me giggle to see Kimono coupled with modern purses.

Me on the bridge.

Yay! Bonsai!

This was my favorite tree because it had just that one tiny orange. The tree itself is only about six inches tall.

The first person who tells me what kind of tree this is wins a prize.

A pretty stream.

The pagoda from below. Evidently this is the oldest pagoda in the region.

Amazing stairway through the rock.

The view from the observation deck.

I leave you today with that image, and a quote from the conversation Grant and Haji had before leaving Sunday morning.

Grant: "Haji is a level ten adventurer."
Haji: "It's a good thing I brought my +10 adventuring jacket."

(if you didn't understand that conversation, congratulations - you're not a nerd."

Route Canal

2009-01-25T19:13:00.009+09:00

Panama is so last week - but I promised to tell you about it, so I will. Over the next couple of days I'll flip back and forth between Panama and Japan. There's going to be a lot of posts, so if you have any friends who don't already read this blog, now would be the time to forward it to them. http://www.ameri-pan.blogspot.com/.

Okay, sales pitch done. On to the story.

The first thing you notice about the Panama Canal is that it is narrow, much narrower than you envisioned. Like the Mona Lisa, you think something so legendary should be larger. But tell that to the men who died of malaria while trying to dig the thing.

The Miraflores locks, in Panama City, are open to the public, and that is where we went on our first day in Panama. No points for originality, I know, but we had to see it.

As soon as we stepped out of the air conditioned car the sun smacked us. It was hot, about 85 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 percent humidity. The barometer would hardly move during our trip.

Approaching the building that housed the lock observation deck, we were faced with what seemed like hundreds of stairs. Mercifully, there was also a narrow escalator to assist the infirm and the lazy – like us.

When we first arrived the locks were idle. No boats were moving. We decided to watch the informational movie and tour the museum first. The movie was a classic Panamanian cheap-as-dirt production. No Emmy nominations here, but at least it was in English.

The museum featured the history, science and the flora and fauna of the Panama Canal. Somewhere amidst the models of digging equipment and period dressed mannequins it hit me. The shear audacity of the Panama Canal was staggering. Men dared to reroute rivers, slice through continents, join oceans - they paid a massive price to do it, but they dared. Suddenly the canal didn't seem so small.

After the museum, we braved the heat to watch a yacht drift through the locks.

The vessel started out level with the top of the hill.

Then water was pumped out of the lock to lower the boat to the next level.

After a few minutes, the water level in the first lock was even with that of the second.

Then my favorite part - hydraulics pushed the doors open, allowing the boat to pass out of one lock and into the other.

Little boats sail through on their own.

Big boats - like the one above - are guided by little trains that run along on either side of the canal. No matter what size the boat is a licensed Canal Pilot is at the helm. The pilots can earn up to $5000 per ship.

I can imagine this makes some captains uncomfortable. I wouldn't want to relinquish control of my boat. But the alternative isn't much better. An extra month to sail through the difficult waters around the tip of South America is more than most people have. Of course big ships, like the G.W. have no choice; the Panama Canal is narrow.

I leave you today with a quote from William Howard Taft, 27th president of the United States, "My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States. "

The wheels on the the bus go...

2009-01-15T21:48:00.007+09:00

We walked down the dirt road in the skin-baking sun, past the palm trees, and the two story palace belonging to the Panamanian professors who work at the University. You have to be rich to own a two story house. They might even have air conditioning. But lets not get ahead of ourselves.

We sat in the shade under the tin roof of the bus stop. There's a water spigot by our feet, to water your dog or yourself I guess.

We could hear the bus coming before we saw it. It rattled and shook around the curve. When the horn beeped we waved and the bus stopped. We could have waved it down at any point on it's route. The bus stop is more of a suggestion than anything.

As the bus stops a man swings out the door. He has a metal coin sorter strapped to his belly. He doesn't seem to care that the bus was moving when he stuck his foot and arm out the door. He greets us as we get on the bus.

Grant nearly has to fold in half. The aisle is only about four feet high and narrow enough that I can feel my hips brushing the seats on either side. We snagged the bench seat at the very back. That was a lucky thing because Grant could stretch his legs out along the aisle. The little girl in front of him kept turning around to stare at the gringo giant.

The bus lurched forward. It jumped and rattled. No air conditioning. The windows closed against the dust. The seats brown and torn. When someone wants to get off, he signals to the driver. The door-man collects his 65 cents and the bus stops. Sometimes it's at a designated bus stop. Sometimes it's in front of the man's house or a shop.

As we rounded a curve the woman in front of us threw a cigarette pack out the window. Cleanliness is not a goal here in Panama. Trash heaps in the gutters and ditches of the city.

When we reached the bus stop in David (Da-veed), MIL gestures to the hive buzzing around us. "This is the center of the universe."

Want to buy a lottery ticket, a coconut, and pair of sun glasses? You can buy it from a street vendor. Gum, candy, soda, clothes, you can buy those from the hole-in-the-wall shops.

We stop to buy some Pipas, otherwise known as fresh coconuts. The seven-year-old boy tries to sell us one for each of us and seems upset that we only ask for two. His father chops the tops of the coconuts with a machete then sticks a couple of straws in it. The fruit is chilled and the liquid inside tastes like watery milk.

We walk a few steps before I raise the camera to take a picture of Grant drinking the coconut milk. I hear a frantic pattering of feet. MIL laughs. When I peek around the edge of the camera I see the little Pipa boy clinging to Grant's leg and smiling.

I take their picture.

That little kid made my day.

I leave you today with a quote from "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. "Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."

Paradise Found

2009-01-13T23:17:00.005+09:00

I can hear the bugs buzzing, the roosters crowing, the ceiling fans whizzing. Occasionally a car goes by on the road outside the gate. But I don't pay much attention. All the windows are open to the breeze. Actually, they never close. Screens keep the bugs out and let the breeze, and the dust, in.

MIL has to dust every day if she wants to keep the house clean. It's a beautiful house. The walls are cement but MIL has painted a beautiful fern motif in the living room and bedroom. The rest is textured cream. The floors are mostly tiled but we'll have to help them move the bar so they can get to the floor underneath.

The furnishings are an odd mix of the luxurious and the makeshift. They brought their bar, their king size bed, the huge television. But the stove is a pair of camp burners. The counter is a folding table. It's a work in progress. When it's done it really will be paradise. They're planning for a screened patio and an in-ground pool.

Yesterday, we met the neighbor boys, Jose and Aris. They are the sweetest kids imaginable. Grant and I don't speak Spanish but we understand a little. Ditto for Jose and Aris with English. Poor MIL and FIL had to act as translators.

The conversation consisted mostly of giggling, with the occasional shy look at the people you couldn't speak too.

Jose had been watching the house while MIL and FIL were gone. So we asked whether he had any trouble from the Bruja, which translates as witches but means something more like evil spirits. He insists that the witches can get through the kind of windows MIL put in the house. But this time all was quiet.

The boys are hard to describe. Both are dark skinned, with dark hair and eyes. Jose is heavier set and blockier than Aris, but Aris is only 14 to Jose's 17.

Jose wants to be a doctor. He plans to go to Cuba for the free medical training.

I took one picture of them last night. Maybe they'll let me take some more. I'll post them all when I get home. I will also try to post more extensively over the next few days. It should be easier now that we're in a place with Internet.

I leave you today with a quote from Laurie Anderson, "Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much better."

All the worlds a greenhouse and all the men and women merely fertilizer

2009-01-12T07:36:00.005+09:00

I'm in a hotel in Santiago, Panama. It's very ... colorful. But let's backtrack for a minute.

We started our trip at 12:30 on Thursday. The bus took two hours to get from Yokosuka to Narita. That left us three hours to kill before our flight left. Airports can be Purgatory. But the Narita airport was like a playground for grownups.

The check in desks were housed in two gigantic, echoing wings. The ceilings were so high you felt like a bug. The Japanese people were, as always, kind and efficient.

Our three hours of exploration time were not wasted. We found an oxygen bar, but didn't try it. We found a origami museum and shop. The museum part was full of the most intricate origami scenes ever created. Towns, samuri, cherry trees complete with tiny pink blossoms. It was incredible. We found a lounge with 100 yen for ten minute computers, recliners, and monitors that showed each gate in that wing.

The flight was awful. It was long. We were exhausted. Poor Grant stuffed his long legs into the tiny leg space granted by the airline.

Landing - rocky. Customs - slow. Baggage claim - slower. Taxi - expensive. Night in a New Jersey hotel - nice but way expensive. They wanted to charge me 9:95 for 24 hours of internet, which is why I didn't update you earlier.

We watched cartoons all morning and since all they had was Disney Channel the cartoons were all aimed at pre-schoolers. So we watched the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse - which, by the way, has no grasp of physics - and Little Einstiens, and Grant's personal favorite Handy Manny, about a Mexican handy man with a box full of talking tools.

Another plane. Another long flight, though less than half as long as the first. Landing in Panama - smooth. Imigration - quick. Baggage Claim - long. Customs - also long. Walk outside and play find the gringos.

Panama smells like a greenhouse, and it feels like one two.

We stayed two nights at Abby's house. Abby is an amazing woman who befriended MIL and FIL in Spanish school. Her life reads like a travel novel. She served as an Au Pier in Europe, directed a dance company and edited magazines. She and her husband Bill retired to Panama. They live in a beautiful house on the old military base.

While there we made a few side trips to the Panama Canal and other places. More on those later when I have enough bandwith to upload pictures. You may have to wait till I get home.

Now I have to go back to my blue and salmon walled room with the pink curtains and the sun and moon sink tiles. Don't worry. I'll take pictures.

Ameri-pan-ama

2009-01-08T07:35:00.003+09:00

Please stay tuned for a special news bulletin.

This just in, Grant and Emma will be traveling to Panama, the country not the town, over the next two weeks to visit his parents. They have been promised a visit to the Panama Canal, a hotel with a swim up bar, and karaoke with some other gringo's. The locals are evidently very excited to meet the tall American and his light-eyed wife.

When asked about the trip Emma said, "A trip to a third world country, uh, okay I guess." By all reports, Grant is very excited.

That means Ameri-pan is now Ameri-pan-ama. Internet access may be patchy but updates will follow as they become available.

Don't touch that dial.

Party at the palace

2009-01-02T23:19:00.013+09:00

Thank you for joining us on our tour of the Imperial Palace this afternoon. The Imperial Palace is open to the public only two days a year, on his birthday and on the second of January to welcome the new year.

The Imperial Palace is located in Tokyo. Since we will be traveling from Yokosuka-Chuo train station, I suggest you bring a book. It's going to be a long train ride. A friendly warning, the train is bound to be crowded. You may be forced to stand under the arm of a young Japanese man who is twice as wide as you are. His grandmother may or may not fall against you every time the train hits a curve.

After transferring trains in Shinagawa we will arrive at Tokyo station. The building will be crowded. Fortunately, that means we will have no trouble finding the Imperial Palace. All we have to do is follow the crowd spilling out of the station.

The Emperor will make his address several times so there's no need to rush. We can catch the 1:30 speech. It might be a good idea to get lunch first. We will eat lunch on the 5th floor of a shopping center. I recommend the tuna steak. It comes with rice and a tomato salad, which is basically a whole tomato in sauce. We will drink Jasmine tea and spend many minutes figuring out how to split the bill between the eight people in our party.

On the way out we hear a flute and drum and see a dragon dancing in the hall. He bites the heads of passersby and is greeted with applause. We can only guess that this is some sort of ritual for luck in the New Year. Members of our group may choose to participate.

Walking to the palace you will be struck first by the crowds and then by the scenery. The outer gardens are open most of the year and you can walk or even bike in them.

Today, however, we are entering the inner sanctum. We must pass two security checkpoints. At the first our bags will be searched, at the second we will be frisked by a smiling Japanese woman who gives us the "OK" signal when she is finished.

Someone may hand you a Japanese flag made of of paper. Take it. There are no gift shops in the palace so this will be your only souvenir.

The scenery becomes more striking as you near the palace gate. The crowd presses. A guard stands on a box on either side of the gate.

You have reached the sacred center.

Ancient buildings rise in the distance, but the palace itself is surprisingly modern. It has been updated over the years.

You are allowed into a cordoned area in a courtyard. You will stand there for half an hour, occasionally looking up at the bullet proof box where the Emperor will stand to give his address. The crowd presses closer as more people join the wait.

There are a surprising number of gaijin, foreigners, in the crowd. A blond girl smiles at you and you smile back then look away quickly in typical American fashion. You get the feeling she might be from Europe but you're not sure why you think that.

An announcement drifts over the crowd. You can't understand it, but everyone goes silent, expectant, so you know he is coming. When he finally steps into the box you can't see him because the crowd has lifted a thousands of flags and is waving them in a deafening rattle of paper.

You strain to see over the crowd, it would be easy if it weren't for the gaijin boys who are taller than you are. You lift your camera over your head, hoping to snap a picture of the man and his wife glimpsed between the bobbing heads.

He speaks words you don't understand. It is a short speech, only a few minutes long, but he stands another five minutes just waving at the crowd, letting them see him and take their pictures.

Then he is gone. The crowd quiets and turns to the left. You move, baby step by baby step, away from the palace, toward open ground. Eventually you can walk normally and let go of the purse carried by the girl in front of you. Your friend in turn, lets go of your bag.

The show is over, but there's still a lot to see. You pass gates and bridges.

You marvel over the height and thickness of the palace walls.

You shade your eyes from the sun glinting off the moat.

You stop to have your picture taken in a park opposite the palace.

On the train ride home you fight not to fall asleep. It's been a long day.

I leave you today with a quote from Emperor Akihito's address. "I am hoping that this year will prove a better year." That's a sentiment we can all agree on.

down with the sickness

2008-12-29T08:40:00.004+09:00

So Thursday was Christmas and then Grant had a long weekend. We had Friday, Saturday and Sunday to do whatever we wanted. Unfortunately, by about noon Friday I was feeling decidedly icky. I spent the whole weekend with one of those colds that makes you feel like every breath is filtered through the sponge they use to clean the floor of the men's head. Only thankfully your nose is so stuffed you can't smell anything.

That's my excuse for not having any awesome adventures to share with you after the long weekend. We did find time to visit a ramen place that we've passed about five thousand times and never bothered to go into. Usually, we get ramen (and fried rice) at this little hole in the wall shop with a single window, one long cracked counter, and a tv that was new the year I was born. It is run by a old, skinny, woman with a come-in-sit-down-what-the-heck-do-you-want personality and her chubby, old, husband who either falls asleep or hangs out the tiny window when he's not cooking. It has it's own charm I assure you.

Saturday, we decided to try a new place because Shannon had pointed it out to me and I kept meaning to go but always forgot it was there. We call it the red ramen place because it has the only shiny, red-painted storefront on the street.

Here are some pictures taken with my spiffy new camera bought for me by my loving husband this Christmas. As you can see, it's red on the inside too.

Grant wearing his favorite shirt. You can see the kitchen and the menu in the background.

This is a picture of the English menu, which I never could have dreamed of taking with my old camera. The food descriptions were translated well enough, but the little introduction paragraph on the back was amusing. Here's what it says in case you can't read the picture:

"We the Mutsumi store came research in piles aiming at the ramen noodles for
which it does not depend on a business-use processed food. And the soup of the
completed boast is the taste of the genuine article which boiled thoroughly a
pig, a hen, Niboshi, sea tangle, vegetables, etc. well. Air
fresh in the
rich nature of north ground and Hokkaido and the ramen noodles of delicious
water to the "Mutsumi store" were [word unclear]."

What does it mean? I dunno. You tell me. I just take the pictures I don't interpret them.

I leave you today with a quote from Kin Hubbard, "No one can feel as helpless ans the owner of a sick goldfish."

Christmas

2008-12-25T18:27:00.000+09:00

May you all enjoy Christmas this much. I love you.

Up your date for pennies a day

2008-12-23T06:57:00.002+09:00

This is just a quick update for those of you who wondered about our PPS. Our stuff came yesterday at about 9 a.m. My house looks like a disaster zone but we've emptied most of the boxes and gotten rid of the packing material. Out of everything we own, only one dish arrived broken. If you know how many dishes we have you'll realize what a miracle that is. We've been running the dishwasher and the washing machine non-stop because everything has been in storage for eight months and I'm not wearing it or eating off it until it has been cleaned.

Thanks to all of you who offered your support through the madness. We love you.

I leave you today with a quote from the random quotes page at TheQuotationsPage.com. Edith Nesbitt said, "It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most astonishing," but there's nothing like sleeping in a real bed after three months of futon.

Where are you Christmas?

2008-12-19T14:28:00.002+09:00

Grant is in the other room playing his new drum set. He's trying to master some new sequence. I can't really follow what he's doing but he seems to enjoy it. I am supposed to be looking up recipes for our Christmas party, which is tomorrow. I guess I'm stalling.

Because Haji and Thomason are both on duty tomorrow they're coming over today to help taste test the cookies. Once again a party becomes a two day affair. That's okay. I like having people here.

Christmas is coming so soon. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It takes on a different meaning when you're far away from home and your friends are of the newer vintage. I have so little in the way of history with these people. Even Grant. He and I have never spent a Christmas together. It was always easier for him to get leave around the new year. So that's what he did.

Being in a part of Japan where the climate is so warm, living in the city, having our own apartment but none of our family around, we are forced to modify all our Christmas traditions.

I didn't have an advent wreath this year. I couldn't find one. Not only is our Christmas tree fake, but it's two feet tall. I've made my peace with that. The little sapling is actually starting to grow on me. I may not even set up our big tree, though it will arrive days before Christmas. There is no snow here, there will be no snowmen, no snowball fights and the view remains green. The Christmas carols that talk about snow and treetops glistening make no sense in this context. I've stuck cling-on snowflakes to the patio sliding door. That helps. Maybe I'll make a turkey pie to eat on Christmas eve.

Christmas morning will be strange. Grant is on duty, so it will be, in a way, just another day for me. Our Christmas will come on the 26th. The same day it comes to my family back home. That's comforting in its way.

But today and tomorrow we will have good friends gathered in our home. There will be stories and laughter and the sweet smell of cookies baking. The little tree will glow. Maybe we'll watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

It may not be the Christmas I remember from my childhood. But it's still Christmas.

To quote Irving Berlin, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know ... may your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white."

It's gooood

2008-12-18T09:47:00.002+09:00

I just got a phone call. Our personal property shipment is here! It will be delivered on the 22 of December. That's Monday. Monday. As in four days from today. Meaning before Christmas. I'm excited, can you tell? I'm off to sign the paper work

This update brought to you by Bias, the dude who said, "A wise man carries his possessions with him."

If you're gonna panic...

2008-12-15T11:31:00.003+09:00

The word of the day is context. Context is defined by dictionary.com as "the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc."

The context of a military base makes certain situations or events okay, even when, in any other context, they would be cause for blind, screaming like a banshee with it's finger caught in a car door, panic.

For instance, say you are walking down the street, carrying a large package you just picked up at the post office.

You are passing between the high school and the fitness center when you notice a man in full camouflage crouching in the grass near the sidewalk. He has a helmet on his head, a utility belt around his waist, and a large gun that might or might not be a sniper rifle in his hand. He is looking through the scope of the gun, which is pointed over the parking lot toward a number of parked cars and the entrance to the fitness center.

Looking past him you notice other men, all in camo, all with guns. Some are crouched, others a jogging up the sidewalk past the crouching ones.

How do you react to this?

Well, if you lived almost anywhere in the world you would drop your package and commence screaming like the aforementioned banshee.

But, since I live on a military base, I thought, "Aww, look at them with their war games. So cute," and continued on my way.

This concludes our discussion of the word context. Any questions?

I leave you today with a quote from Ani Difranco. "Taken out of context, I must seem so strange."

How the Navy stole Christmas

2008-12-09T21:25:00.005+09:00

My friend Shannon plans to re-enlist when the time comes.

I've never heard of a Nuke who actually liked being in the Navy. It's a hard job, with long hours and constantly changing demands.

"Why?" I asked.

She answered that she is a completely different person now than she was when she joined the Navy. As far as I'm concerned that is the same principle behind a lobotomy but I wouldn't willfully give myself one.

On the other hand, if you need to learn a lesson the Navy has no problem with teaching it to you in the most unnecessarily painful and frustrating way possible. That's good right?

For instance, Grant and I packed up all our worldly possessions in April. Well, actually a couple of movers packed them up and I watched. Grant was already out to sea.

We were told that all our paperwork was in order and our shipment called the Personal Property Shipment (PPS) would be in Japan by the time we got here. All I had to do was go to the PPS office and schedule the delivery to our apartment.

Well, as many of you know, when I got here in September, a full month later than I was originally supposed to arrive, not only was my PPS not here, but it hadn't even left Norfolk. Somebody had messed up some paperwork somewhere along the line. Our stuff went into permanent storage.

I was, shall we say, frustrated at this point. There was loaner furniture in my apartment, along with loaner sheets and a blanket, all of which I was allowed to keep for up to three months. But I had no dishes, no pots and pans, no towels or pillows, no television. I had a two bedroom apartment twice as large as our efficiency in Norfolk, but I had none of the comforts of home.

A nice man at the PPS office here called Norfolk and got things sorted out. They told him my PPS was being sent out as soon as possible and would arrive no later than Dec. 8.

At least I would get it before Christmas.

In the mean time Grant and I did our best. Grant had wanted a new TV anyway, so we bought one. Our old apartment hadn't had room for a couch or a dinning room table so we bought those too. We bought a futon for the spare room and decided we could bear to sleep on it for a couple of months. Grant would be out to sea for most of that so it wasn't a big deal.

One of my friends got her shipment in almost three weeks early. I was hoping mine would follow the same pattern. But the days came and went with no call from the PPS office. Thanksgiving was a bit of a challenge, but we bought cheap pots and pans, dishes and flatware and continue to make do. I comforted myself with the knowledge that I would have all my kitchen stuff by Christmas.

As the time passed, I found myself missing different things we owned but didn't have yet. Sometimes it was my teddy bear, Jacob. As the weather got cooler I missed my faux fur blanket and all the sweaters I hadn't brought because I wouldn't need them in August. Whenever I cooked I missed my old pots and pans. When I started writing for the Seahawk, the base newspaper, I missed my journalism books.

On Dec. 8, the day, I just want you to remember, my PPS was supposed to arrive no later than, I waited impatiently until Dec. 8 and called the PPS office. I gave the nice man my name, spelled it once, twice.

"I'll call you right back," he said.

He didn't call me back, but the PPS director did. My stuff wasn't here, wouldn't be here until Dec. 17. By which I mean that it was supposed to arrive on the shores of Japan on the ship scheduled to arrive Dec. 17. Then it would have to go through customs. Then, it would be put on a truck and brought to base, where it would be processed before it could be put on another truck and carried to my front door by super-efficient Japanese movers who take their shoes on and off every time they step inside your door. Oh, and customs closes down around the holiday season.

I was now, shall we say, severely frustrated.

"So, we're not going to get it before Christmas."

"We'll do our best." Well that was reassuring.

I hung up the phone, stared at the place where my Christmas tree should have been standing, and cried. I was still crying when poor Grant came home from work. He agreed to buy a live Christmas tree to make me feel better. I snapped that it wasn't about the stupid tree. Only it was.

I'm already far away from home, without my old friends and with no family but Grant. There's no snow. I missed the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Even Cartoon Network is still playing their "Summer Meltdown" cartoons.

The garland, the lights, the holly centerpiece, even the red, white and green wrapped presents didn't help. Without that Christmas tree - somehow it just didn't feel like Christmas.

I went to bed that night feeling sort of stupid. I knew Christmas would come with or without a tree. Christmas was inside me and all that gobbly-gook. A couplet from How the Grinch Stole Christmas was stuck on repeat in my mind.

"It came without ribbons, it came without tags, it came without packages, boxes or bags."

I puzzled and puzzed till my puzzler was sore. I could I solve this problem for myself?

The next morning I went to the NEX front lot and looked at the live Christmas trees. They were scraggly and sickly. Looking at them made me sad. That wasn't going to work.

I went inside. There was one fake tree left. It was eight feet tall, pre-lit and over $200. The price, the extravagance, that made me sad too.

I went out on town. I spent 700 yen or about $7 on something that makes me smile every time I see it. Problem solved.

I leave you today with the words of an unknown sage. "Happiness is optional," take the option.

sanpo suru - to take a walk

2008-12-02T16:45:00.002+09:00

Grant is very much against being one of those military families that lives in Japan for years and never really bothers to step outside the gate. So we decided to take a little Sunday stroll.

I think I've explained before how I have a comfort zone bordered by the sea on one side and Verney Park on the other and extending only to the end of blue street. My excursions outside these self-imposed boundaries have been limited. Grant's have been non-existent if you don't count the day trip we took to Kamakura.

On Sunday, we decided comfort zones are for chumps. We were going exploring.

We walked out the Main Gate and headed left through the park. It's a beautiful stretch of land along the shore, directly across from the base. Usually you can see several small ships and at least one submarine. We even found the crows nest of the G.W. peeking over the rooftops.

Verny park was built in memory of some French guy who did something or other. I didn't really read the sign. At the end of the park furthest from base there is a small museum. The sign claimed it is built in the style of a french house - it's small and stone with a funny roof that slopes in all directions. The park is also supposedly landscaped in the style of a french garden. If that's true then the only flower in France is the rose.

Verny park has red roses and pink roses and white roses and orange roses and very little else. There's a fountain with a brass rose statue on top of it. There's also this one tree that always makes me a little sad because it's got all of these cables wrapped around various branches and bolted to the ground. I assume the landscapers are trying to coax it to grow in a particular shape, this is the land of bonsai after all. But it looks like they're trying to keep it from escaping.

We walked out of the park and past JR station which belongs to one of the two train services that run through Yokosuka. This was as far as we had ever gone. We crossed the train tracks and kept going. At first the streets were wide and the buildings were tall. Futon mattresses and blankets hung over apartment balconies.

We kept walking. Eventually the street narrowed. There was a tunnel ahead. Cars sped along under it. Houses perched on top of it. They do not waste space here.

On the other side of the tunnel we found ourselves in a more residential area. The houses were tiny. They nestled together like puppies in a basket. Some of them had tiny courtyards enclosed by low walls and filled with miniature jungles. I saw one that looked like something I would build out of Legos. It was as long as a small house in the states. But it was only about as wide as a college dorm room. At least, it looked that way from the outside. I couldn't imagine how anyone could live there.

Once we passed a woman crouched behind an iron fence in a front yard the size of a small entry hall, replanting a terra cotta colored plastic planter. There were eight or nine other planters scattered around her. This, evidently, was her garden.

A few of the houses were raised up on stilts with carports underneath. Like I said, they don't waste space.

We passed through several more tunnels, each with cars beneath and houses overhead. Just before the entrance to each tunnel I noticed a long flight of stone steps leading to the houses above. I hope, for the sake of the inhabitants, that there was an alternate way to reach their homes. Walking up a couple of hundred steps with an armful of groceries or a small child would be less than fun.

Every now and then we passed a vending machine, selling Coke, Fanta and hot coffee to the residents of the surrounding homes.

Eventually, I realized that the road we were traveling followed the train tracks. After walking for an hour we had reached the next station. It was smaller and more out of the way than the Yokosuka station. The main building was raised above the train tracks and reached by a covered stairway on either side. A third stairway led down onto the platform. Let me say this again - the Japanese do not waste space.

We rode the train home without incident and my feet, stuffed into sneakers half a size too small, were grateful for the rest. When we got home Grant ordered me new shoes.

I leave you today with a quote from Malcolm Gladwell, "You can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face."

Thankful for paper plates

2008-12-01T12:03:00.002+09:00

Sometimes it takes me a while to process events well enough to be able to write about them. That's why it's December 1 and I'm just now telling you about our Thanksgiving, uh, dinner.

Grant was on duty on Thanksgiving Day so we held our Thanksgiving celebration on the 28th. I baked all Thanksgiving Day making the deserts and corn bread and sweet potato casserole. Perry, Baker and Brown came over to keep me company and, in theory, to help. Perry was the only one who did much helping. Grant came home for a couple of hours in the middle of the day and he helped a bit too, mostly doing dishes and peeling apples for the pie.

I was ridiculously proud of myself for managing to make the entire pie from scratch. I didn't even swear at the crust. I had to promise Brown I would save him a piece since he would be on duty during our dinner.

An hour or so before Grant had to go back to the ship we all decided we were hungry. Obviously, I was not going to cook dinner for anyone that day so we headed out on town to get something to eat. We had wanted to order pizza but the place was closed for Thanksgiving. We ended up stopping even before we reached Womble gate. McDonald's was right there, and it was open. A quick, sidewalk conference decided us. We were going to McDonald's for Thanksgiving. Happy Holidays.

Back at the house, it was midnight before I gave up on my second attempt to get bread to rise and went to bed.

I woke up at 7 the next morning. Grant wakes up at 6:30 when he's home so I guess I'm stuck on his schedule even when he's not here.

Grant and Baker showed up an hour and a half later. I sent them into the abyss to get me a potato smasher. Grant wanted mashed potatoes with dinner. It was black Friday, and since the NEX is the only place the navy and marine families here have to shop, I was pretty sure most of the 20 thousand some-odd families who live here would be fighting each other to the death of Christmas ribbon right about then. I could only start my cooking for the day and hope the boys made it home alive.

An hour and a half later they were back with a huge case of beer and a plastic bag that I thought was far too large to hold a potato smasher. I was wrong. They couldn't find a metal hand smasher, so they bought a food processor instead. This is what I get for sending two nuclear technicians to buy kitchen utensils.

We passed the next few hours in the usual Thanksgiving manner - trying to assemble kitchen appliances, preparing stuffing and shooting Zombies while eating pizza. Baker had brought his copy of House of the Dead for us to play on the Wii. I made time to play while the food was cooking.

That was the height of the day. I should have known things would go down hill for a while. Valleys and mountains tend to stick pretty close together.

Grant had warned me that his friend Morrison would be over to make macaroni and cheese. "Today? That's not a great choice."
Grant shrugged, "He seemed so excited about it I couldn't say no."
I agreed, after all, how long could it take to make macaroni and cheese?

Well, the kraft boxed kind takes about 15 minutes if you're slow. But Morrison showed up with four grocery bags and his own cooking utensils. He was making oven baked macaroni and cheese and two loaves of cranberry nut bread. I was - no surprise here - not thrilled. But I worked around him and he's a sweet kid so that worked out.

A few hours later we hit rock bottom. It was 4 o'clock, about the time Grant had told everyone to arrive. I was planning on somewhere between six and eight people. On final count there were 15 plus Grant and I. Oh, and Patch had brought a keg. I was really not thrilled.

There are some basic truths to life that, if you could only remember them when you needed to, would make your life a lot easier. The one I struggle with most is "going with the flow." I would like to learn not to cling to expectations so that I can enjoy whatever happens. Well, I'm still learning.

The first hour or so was a bit tense. Somebody called for a pack of cards and six people sat around the table, beers in hand to play a game whose title I won't print here - this is a kid friendly blog after all. Someone else popped "The Nightmare Before Christmas" into the DVD player and a group swarmed my couch to watch that. Patch, to my great, great annoyance, attempted to fashion a funnel out of a water bottle. Not only was that completely inappropriate for Thanksgiving dinner, he was also in my way. I was attempting to wash dishes to stave of the mental breakdown building in my skull.

Every once in a while someone would ask me if I need help. I always, very politely, said no. If I had been forced to interact with anyone for longer than a sentence I might have lost all self control.

Now some of you are thinking, so you got more people than you expected, that's not the end of the world. And you would be absolutely correct. But it was very unpleasant in the moment. I didn't even know half of these people.

I ended up slipping while washing dishes and slicing my thumb on the stupid food processor. I used this as an excuse to lock myself in the bathroom for five minutes with the water running full blast so no one could hear me cry. When I came out I felt a bit better.

Except for Patch, everyone really was trying to be considerate. Someone offered to use coasters to protect the dinner table from their sweating beers. Another quieted everyone when they got to loud. The smokers made sure the patio door was firmly shut to keep the smell out. They had even brought paper plates, plastic cups, and extra deserts.

Dinner was successfully served. Though some people had to sit on the floor to eat, everyone commented on how good the food was, even when they didn't think I was within earshot.

Once I overheard Brock say, "I feel like I actually got to have Thanksgiving this year, it's been like three years since I had a real Thanksgiving."

When Patch got too rowdy they bundled him back to the ship. When I broke out speed Scrabble, we had to form teams and play two games so that everyone who wanted to got to play. The night ended with about seven people gathered around the television watching the new Futurama movie.

Saylor even managed to clean up a lot of the kitchen before she left and Grant and Perry did the rest.

It's amazing the affect perspective can have on a situation. To quote a little Asian girl who whispered to her mother when she saw Grant at the NEX, "Fee, fie, foe, fum."

Phillipians 1:3

2008-11-27T23:00:00.002+09:00

Happy Thanksgiving cats and kittens. I've made a little list of some things I am thankful for. Feel free to leave comments with your own lists.

I am Thankful for...
my little brother
my parents
my husband
my old house in Maine
my new warm apartment
the opportunity to travel
all of my friends back home in the states
all of my new friends here
good books that inspire me to write better
bad books that give me hope of being published
priority mail
international phone calls
the library within walking distance
the tree in front of the community center
hawks
Mt. Fuji
Futurama on DVD
not owning a car
pens
soft tee-shirts
a view of the ocean
the last picture of my whole family together
holidays with my husband

To quote the Discovery Channel, "I love the whole world, it's such a brilliant place."

This post dedicated to the great artist That Guy

2008-11-21T07:47:00.008+09:00

I promised to tell you about the art museum, and here I am telling you. Sorry it took so long. There's been a bit of confusion, which I wanted to resolve before I told you about this. But here it's been a week and it's not resolved yet. So you can just be confused with me.

We drove three hours straight up the interstate to get there. Well actually Cory drove, I navigated and Heather sat in the back seat providing moral support. Do to my mother's map reading lessons when I was a little girl we only got lost once in the streets right next to the museum. You know how it is - you can see the building but where's the parking lot?

Outside, the Tokyo-Fuji Art Museum looked like any other museum in the world. It was square and the engineers had used a lot of glass in the design. A nude, tribal chieftain looking woman stood almost as tall as the building near the old entrance.

We went around to the new entrance. This was easy to do because though none of us speak anything you would call passable Japanese, just riding the train a couple of times teaches you the Kanji for enter and exit. Inside we found a two story glass room dwarfing a single desk on one side and opening into a small cafe on the other.

Since Heather and I had skipped breakfast we opted to put our stomachs before art. I had a salad made with red beans and lotus root. Lotus root looks like a lacy tuber and tastes like a peanuty potato. I highly recommend trying it if you ever get the chance.

Having eaten, we bought tickets, 1000 yen each and ascended up the amazing magical escalator to the second floor. At first we were confused by the escalator. Heather nudged me and said, "Escalator now stairs" but it turned on when we got close - motion sensitive.

We jilted the permanent exhibit to go look at the feature exhibit first. It was called Happy Mother, Happy Children, and that's all I know about it because the rest of the ad was in Japanese. A series of long winding galleries was filled with paintings, sculpture and photographs all depicting children or women with children.

The first gallery was filled with Western art, the kind of stuff you could see in the states. I saw a Mary Cassat and a Renoir. Most were mounted behind a wall of glass, which held me at least three feet from any given painting. Also I kept having to shoo my own reflection out of the art. Very annoying.

After that first gallery we found a lot of Asian art. This was more like it. I could see Cassat at home but I had never seen The Wind by Tsutomo Fuji. It was a large painting of a girl in a purple and white western style dress. She was kneeling on a rock against a gray background. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted. Her hair blew in the wind. Looking at her I could almost feel the wind in my own hair. It was the best piece in the whole exhibit.

But the real pay-off came when we moved on to the permanent exhibit. There were eight small galleries - two with only one piece of art each. But it took us a long time to make it through. The first couple were the usual bible scenes and portraits of ancient dead people. Those are nice, but not my favorite. Then in gallery 5 we found our first bit of amazing.

Water Lillies, by Claude Monet painted 1908

We stared at it for a while, fascinated. Then I turned around. I could see from gallery 5 straight into gallery 6.

I was in the presence of an American icon. Is it art? Dunno. But it sure is American, so it struck me funny to see it hanging in a Japanese art museum. I'm talking about Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup can.

Then I saw a guy with an apple for a head. Here's where the confusion starts. When I saw the painting I thought "Holy crud! That's The Son of Man by Rene Magritte." Okay that's a lie, what I really thought was "Holy crud! It's the apple head guy." I didn't know the name of the art or the artist but I knew I'd seen it all over the place.

The painting was of a man in a suit. At least you have to assume he was a man. He had no neck and a large green apple floated in the place of his head. Now those of you who know The Son of Man well might be catching on to where the confusion came from.

I figured I could come home, look up 'apple head man' on Google images and find the artist and the title of the piece. Therefore, I didn't write it down at the museum. I wasn't supposed to be using a pen in their anyway. Art museums are scared of ink.

We continued through the rest of the exhibits. In Gallery 7 we found decades worth of prints from Robert Capa Gold Medalists. Capa was a famous photographer. The Happy Mother Happy Children exhibit included a photograph of Pablo Picasso and his son Claude that was taken by Capa. Gold medals are awarded to photographers who do "the best published photographic reporting from abroad requiring exceptional courage and enterprise." The one that particularly caught my eye was the portrait of the afghan girl with the green eyes from the cover of National Geographic.

It was taken by Steve McCurry in 1985.

Okay, so we saw all this art. We drove two hours home. I get on my computer to write about this amazing art exhibit. Half way through writing the post I come to the part about the apple head man. I look up the painting to find the artist. I find the painting, but it's not the same.

Confusion sets in.

Rene Magritte's apple head man is a painting of a man wearing a suit and bowler hat. He most definitely has a head. The floating apple merely obscures his face rather than replacing his whole head. Which begs the question, what the heck did I see at the Tokyo-Fuji museum of art?

First I thought maybe it was still a Magritte, you know, same idea, different painting. After all, Monet did lots of Water Lily paintings. But as far as I could tell Magritte had never painted apple head man, only son of man.

I tried the museum web site. I had a lot of trouble navigating the Japanese version and the English version was sparse, the current exhibits page was under construction.

So if anyone can tell me who painted the apple head man and what the real title is I would be eternally grateful. Otherwise I'll just have to wait until I can get another ride to the museum.

I leave you today with these words from Edmond de Goncourt "A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world."

Today is your day...

2008-11-19T09:19:00.006+09:00

Later I will tell you about the trip we took yesterday to a surprising museum near Tokyo. But right now I'm more interested in the view outside my window.

The air is increadibly clear today. Sometimes I have trouble seeing the opposite side of the bay, but today I can practically read the names on the sides of the ships way out there. Curious at what else I could notice, I switched to my bedroom window. Usually it's nothing but trees and bare cliff faces ornamented by the huge blue crane that towers over the loading docks. Today I turned my head to the left and saw another big blue crane towering over peir 12 and behind that ... I saw something so surprising that I opened the window and screen to get a better view.

This is what I saw:

That, my friends is the famed Mt. Fuji, as seen on a clear day from CFAY Yokosuka.

How could I have never seen this before. I've been living in this apartment for almost two months and I had never noticed the icon of Japan right outside my window. Is this the clearest day we've had in two months? Or had I just never looked at the just the right angle? I had been trying so hard to get out and experience Japan, when Japan was right outside my window.

I leave you today with a quote from Dale Carnege, "All of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today."

and if that last post didn't make you happy...

2008-11-17T19:35:00.002+09:00

Please listen up for some important announcements here at Daiei Mall.

If you need to pay for your purchases please go to the Casher

If you need help with your purchases please visit the Searvise Counter
And when you are done with lunch please bring your dishes to the Dish washing area. Tank You.

That will be all.

Happiness is those who sing with you

2008-11-15T22:33:00.005+09:00

Today was the kind of day that makes the hard ones worth muddling through. I woke up to a warm house, which was a small miracle all on it's own. The Navy has been attempting to make mother nature conform to it's schedule and therefore hadn't turned the heat on in spite of several cold, overcast fall days and even colder nights. But this morning my house was warm, which meant outside was warm, which meant the sun was out. I was a happy girl.

I puttered around the house, doing laundry and dishes while I waited for Heather to call. We were going to a book sale. I love books. I love reading and I love stories and I love books, especially really cheap, book-sale-in-the-party-room books.

When I struck off across base to meet Heather the sun was shining, the crows were cawing, the hawks were circling. I realize that sounds sort of scary, but in Yokosuka that's normal. We have crows; we have hawks. Even the wind had decided to behave itself and just skip along instead of trying to knock me off my feet.

As I passed the library a group of four middle school boys walked parallel to me on the other side of the street.

"I wish I had a big brother," boy one said. "He could teach me all his tricks."

"Yeah, that's right, they teach you stuff," boy two said.

Boy three said, "I like having a little brother, because I like teaching him stuff. I like to teach."

This was not the kind of conversation I expected to hear from middle school boys walking down the street on a Saturday morning. There is hope for humanity after all.

A few seconds later, in front of the after school program building, I saw a girl in a cheer leading uniform walking toward me. Her hair was curled and in a ponytail. Her shoes were plain white canvas. She had the pleated bi-color skirt - the whole getup. Under her jacket I read the initials KHS, Kinnick High School. I grinned at her. I couldn't help it. She was just, so, so exactly right. She grinned back, like she knew exactly why I was smiling and agreed with me.

At the book sale, I gave fifteen dollars to a cheerful woman with a screaming baby in exchange for 9 books and a Yokosuka, Japan Relay for Life tee-shirt. See, reading books can cure cancer.

After that we went to the post office, where I found a huge package from my mommy waiting for me. While carrying it out I noticed that Noah had written "Hi Emma" and drawn a smiley face in pen on the outside of the box. If I hadn't been holding it just that way, I wouldn't have noticed. It made me laugh.

The box was filled with goodies. A new poster that made me shriek out loud in excitement, Noah's school pictures, a beautiful platter for our Thanksgiving turkey and my Christmas tree ornaments and stocking. I called my parents to thank them and ended up talking to my brother for twenty minutes. It was a record breaking conversation. Noah never wants to talk on the phone because, he claims, he never has anything to say. But today he did and all I could do was laugh while he talked.

Heather called again. We were going out on town, to a curry festival. I'm not sure how she heard about it but Heather loves curry so she was excited. I don't like curry but you have to find your on-town fun where you can take it.

Walking over I realized that everything, absolutely everything, was happening this weekend. A travel fair blocked off traffic on main street and filled the bowling alley parking lot. I could hear a recording of excited children singing something that could only be a translation of a Japanese song. It went like this: "See the lion and the unicorn ride the donkey. Hey, ho away we go, riding donkey, riding donkey. Hey ho, away we go, riding on a donkey."

As I walked into her building I realized I had completely forgotten that the Buddhist group I sometimes go to was having a pot luck in the party room of the same building. I poked my head in the door to a chorus of "Emma!" Yoshi, a little 60 something Japanese woman, hugged my arm. "I'm glad you could come, we were waiting for you." I felt a little sheepish for forgetting these people. They're the nicest people in the world.

Me, Heather and Bre ended up sitting at one of the long tables, trying to shield our plates from the onslaught of food being thrust at us by Japanese women.

When we finally got ourselves out we headed for the curry festival. The street between Mikoshi gate and the park was packed with people. We saw children carrying balloon animals, kettle corn and horns of cotton candy. We even saw a Japanese clown.

Sorry he's sideways

We passed booth after booth, staring at the food and drink for sale. Once a woman held out plastic cups offering samples. Heather and I looked at each other.

"What is it?" She asked.

I shrugged. "I think it's saki."

The woman shook her head, "Orange wine."

Well now we had to try it. It started smooth but had that burning echo unique to Japanese drinks. I bought a bottle for Grant to try when he got home.

the curry festival

It was a good day. At every turn I had something new to do and I found myself surrounded by people who like and care about me and whom I like and care about in return. A day like this - that's what life is for.

To make the day complete, half an hour ago my phone rang. It was Bre, "We have heat."

To quote Bre, "Oh yeah, baby."

Veteran's Day

2008-11-11T21:38:00.009+09:00

To Those who have served ...

And to those who are serving...

Thank you.

Shop, Drop and Roll.

2008-11-10T19:45:00.005+09:00

The country of Japan is home to about 127 million people. Those millions live in a country that is smaller than the state of California. Knowing this, I am astounded by the stores. Not because there are so many of them, though there are a lot, but because of what they hold.

Of course you can find typical grocery stores, flower shops and clothing stores. But a sock store? A whole store dedicated to nothing but cloth coverings for your feet and legs? Yup, Heather and I went there today. If you want socks, slippers, leggings, nylons, tights - there's a great place on Blue Street I could recommend.

How about umbrellas? Yup, we've got those too. Just head down the street and up the stairs. You'll find a place blooming umbrellas. Pink, green, polka dots, stripes, plain black. If it keeps you dry when the sky falls down, they have it. And that's all they have.

Even fake hair. I've seen whole shops devoted to the sale of fine hair. Not just wigs, but scrunchies and combs and clips, all with fake hair attached. The best part - they only come in black and shades of brown. Do I really need fourteen different types of hair extensions to choose from? No, but there they are.

People complain about American consumerism. "All Americans think about it money," they say. "It's just buy, buy, buy." Well I've got news for you folks. The Japanese have us beat black and blue and crying over our broken piggy banks.

Anything you want to buy is here, in fifteen colors, eight styles and twelve sizes. So shop away America, but know that you are just a poor, redheaded stepchild next to the consumer capital of the world - Japan.

I leave you today with a quote from actor John Barrymore. "America is the country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one dollar and use it up in two weeks." Japan is the country where the lifetime supply of aspirin comes in an assortment of Pokemon shaped bottles with cheerful phrases on the labels.

Silver lining ahead. Please adjust flight path.

2008-11-07T16:48:00.004+09:00

Being in the military has its good points. Sure my husband makes half the salary he would in the civilian market. Sure we can be moved across the world at a moments notice. Sure they can just misfile paperwork and cause all our worldly possessions to wait in limbo for three months. But you can't beat the benefits.

For the last few days I've been having trouble with the refrigerator. It turns off at weird moments and I have to push the reset button on the outlet to get it started again. More than once I've come home to a dead refrigerator and wondered if I should throw all my food away.

It happened twice today. I had found the last straw.

I picked up my phone and dialed the number of the housing inspector that was stuck on the fluky fridge. I explained my problem. He told me he would send the electrician over.

About 15 minutes later the door bell rang and I looked through the peephole to see two Japanese men dressed in work uniforms - coveralls or overalls and sweatshirts. They slipped off their shoes and came inside. After poking around in my fridge for a few minutes, they they told me it had to be replaced. "We'll be back in ten minutes."

Ten minutes later the door bell rang again. The Japanese men had multiplied by two and they had brought the new fridge. They switched the two. I now had a new, shiny, white fridge. They said the electrician would be over to change the outlet.

And in a few minutes he was. He switched the outlets, plugged in the fridge, bowed and was gone.

To recap. With one phone call I got a new outlet and a new refrigerator. Total cost to me - $0.

Take that civilian world.

I leave you today with an inspiring life lesson from the late comedian Mitch Hedberg, "I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience."

Smash hit

2008-11-01T10:07:00.000+09:00

On Thursday I went in to work and my mentor, Sean, said to one of the other CFAY Media guys, Dan “Are we going to cover the Smash Mouth concert?”

Dan said, “I dunno. Who’s going to do it?”

And that is how I ended up standing in one of the Galley dining rooms with a notebook and voice recorder in my hand talking to the base player from Smash Mouth.

For those of you who don’t know them, Smash Mouth is the band that played “I’m a Believer” on the Shrek soundtrack. They also did “Walking on the Sun” and “All Star.”

I had never interviewed a band before. I had never covered a concert before. Smash Mouth had never done a military concert tour before. It was a day of firsts for everyone involved.

Happily, a camera girl and a reporter from two other media outlets came as well and pretty much ran the band interview. That was fine with me.

The green room at a rock concert looks exactly like I expected it to. The band sort of hung out, talked to reporters, talked to some high school students who had backstage passes, grazed on the buffet. The drummer sat at a table with what looked like just the top part of a drum, practicing or warming up or something.

Outside, where the concert was to be held, somebody handed us earplugs. I found myself happy to have them when I had to get up close to the stage to take pictures or interview the little girl who got to dance with the band.

I think I actually like covering a concert better than I like just going to one. It was a lot of fun and I felt like part of the action.

I may not be getting paid yet. But I am loving this job.

I leave you today with a quote from Aristotle: “All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind,” but that doesn’t mean I won’t take one when it’s available.

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T21:14:00.003+09:00

Happy Halloween

I want to be 7

2008-10-29T19:04:00.003+09:00

I have a job. It's not a paying job yet, but I hope to change that in the near future. I'm working at CFAY media which runs the newspaper and television news for the base. Because I have a lot of experience writing, they have a lot of confidence in my abilities. I hope I can live up to their expectations.

Today, I went to interview a high school student, but I wish I could write a story about her little brother too. By sheer luck and coincidence I met him and his mother in the elevator. He seemed very interested in who I was and what exactly I was up to. I told him I was going to write a story about his sister for the newspaper. That seemed okay with him.

As we were walking into their apartment I asked him how old he was. "7-and-a-half." When you're 7 that half year makes all the difference.

I settled at the kitchen table with a notebook in front of me and began interviewing the girl. He watched from his seat at the kitchen counter for a while, but soon he was at my elbow watching me scribble. I moved my arm a little so he could see what I was doing and tried not to draw too much attention to him so his mother wouldn't get self consious and try to get rid of him. His sister finally shooed him away.

A few minutes later he interrupted us to ask. "How do you write while you're staring at her face like that?"

I grinned. "It takes a lot of practice, but you could learn to do it too. And it makes my handwriting really messy see?" I tipped the pad so he could see it.

His mother said, "and she can still read it."

"Yeah," I said, "maybe I should learn short hand to make it easier."

"My hands are short." The kid said. I laughed. His mother laughed. His sister laughed. Poor kid. He didn't even know what was funny. Maybe he'll grow up to be a writer.

I leave you today with the enlightened answer given by Amy Carter, Pres. Carter's daughter, when asked if she had any message for the children of America, "No."