Whiting-In

Lush and orderly gardens of trimmed shrubs and bamboo stalks separate this space. The spiritual ecology of the Kamakura great temples transforms those who enter with vespering mist that surrounds and awakens participants into a hyper-lucid green-dream. I whited-in while blanketed in the shadow of a lumbering pagoda, a silver polished pond rimmed with neon moss deflecting the pin-drops of rain all around me. My hippocampus was overloaded with the novelty and sheer magnitude of these multidimensional monuments. The peace I found on the meticulously maintained temple ground came in part from the reverence of human accomplishment of harmony in the face of a chaotic and cruel world. The resident monks’ daily chores were testaments of patience, ability and skill, all the while the non-action of massive temple structures plainly stated the capabilities of diligence. It was overwhelming. I took a nap on the stoop of a monastic dorm.

The shrine and the temple are two very different things. The temple is a place of self cultivation, community and purity; the shrine is a playground for superstition. Accessible only through a narrow tunnel entrance, a rocky grove encloses an assortment of colorful, odorous, quirky, and sensual Shinto activities. A maze of wooden Tori gates leads to an icon adorned with various ornaments to whom people offer money and prayers. A red bridge crosses a small pond, home to an albino coy-king and his consorts who are fed by passerby and housed by a spouting waterfall. A fish, not knowing life above water nor realizing his utter dependence on it darts fro’ and to’; a small hole in a rock, five meters above the pond’s surface, serves as the source of his aquatic realm and of his very life. From above us the water falls and through us it courses. We never know from where it flows and we never need to. Who or what feeds us is a benevolent mystery.


Large iron pots filled with the dust of burning incense sends plumes of smoke intocarved out hollows in the rock. On the walls of the cave are strung countless rainbow paper cranes and on the floor in a trickling spring people squat and wash their money for luck in wealth. Small white candles are lit for whichever purpose one desires and placed in reverence, prayer, or meditation into a grotto of flames. Wooden boxes offer divined fortunes and advice. Paper bows and cork-board wishes are ties to metal wires hanging from racks. A scribe delicately brings his black brush to stroke and form intricate kanji. Charms, pendants and wards are sold in satchels for a variety of ailments or wishes. It’s a one-stop-shop to satisfy all mystical desires and to fatten persevering beliefs.

Then, as though polarized in silliness by the lighthearted novelty of the shrine, I had a moment where my heart froze as my breath burst in my guts. The colossus of the iron Daibatsu (Great Buddha) is beyond my expectations. Not kitsch or over-commercialized, the iconic enlightened one emanates a hard aura of metaphysical persistence. The clear skies overhead coupled with the rock solid signpost to clarity of thought was like a tide of hot alkaline water washing the gunk of dispassion and laziness from my eyes.


On a different note (in that order):

It is fun being different here. Red is my new favorite color. I have red pants. I don’t feel that this place has changed me per-se, it is more that I have always been a black sheep and am only given the freedom to enjoy my out-standing-ness fully when I have no other option. I couldn’t blend in here if I tried for the rest of my life.

As the wind blows the trees rustle, the rocks clank and tumble, the valleys bellow and the wings flutter. The reeds of different length whistle different notes and together this grand orchestra enlivens the universe. A melodic harmony is achieved through variation in pitch and voracity. We understand the different sounds made by the pipes of earth but cannot grasp the animating fact that the winds are the pipes of heaven. Only by the silent blowing of the wind can we hear the tangible variations composed by the eternal maestro.

Memory Maelstrom

For those of you who know me well this will be merely a reiteration of a theme that, if you still communicate with me, you must enjoy. I have a sort of penchant for the random, which, I am beginning to realize is why travel and especially Japan seem to offer me up the world of my dreams on a silver platter. Carving out a little niche in my own little corner of subtropical metropolitan jungle, the number of times my awareness is centered by the purely abstract and absurd is a gift.

Necessarily In nonsensical chronological disorder, the recounting of May 22nd-24th is only possible due to a series of random tape recordings, ala the style of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I white’d in (the opposite of blacking out, although to be fair, it was more like a graying-in) next to an Indian elephant. This matriarchal mammalian mastodon, was moated (the verb form of the noun moat) into a flattened desert plateau merely twice her body size. It was a great way to reenter awareness because the contrast of our two lives could not be more vivid. Although it sounds a bit lacking in compassion, which I assure you is not true, seeing this beaten and hopeless shell of a great beast was energizing; I am free and they ain’t broke me yet! Elephant stories always seem to be sad ones.

A unified “Ha!” followed by a short round of clapping drew me into the woods. A line of pre-pubescent boys, standing in an open faced dojo, were shooting arrows into targets 25 meters away as two girls were clapping and collecting the spent arrows. A glimpse of a white tower standing over the trees acted as the next gravitational force. Inside the castle were various specimens of hardened steel and ferocious Samurai masks and battle armor from the shogun era. Naginata, long poles with belly-blending blades at their ends, were especially vivid to imagine in use. I was drawn into contemplation of the outcome of a battle between feudal Japanese and feudal Western armies. The style, the whole mind behind the machine, is of such a different constitution that it would be the closest thing of an interstellar war between two alien species.

The quiet of the freshly moped concrete made my presence uniquely outstanding. Using my cheap 2nd hand umbrella, I received my first kendo lesson on a train platform awaiting the train to who-knows-where from a veteran kendo fighter and very friendly neighbor. His spiritual explanation of the matter, the idea of gauging force and ability through the slightest contact of swords, of defeating the mind, made my suspicion even more concrete: I and they think even less alike than a suspicious person would think (chew on that). Although I was easily twice his mass he would have whipped my ass up and down the train platform with his umbrella. I received the nickname “Buffalo Beef”.

I white’d in on a beach far from home, the end of the line, the beginning of a new region of the island; a place where black sands and the white hair of weather beaten fisherman blend in a dance with the blue of the Pacific. Fisherman cast their poles into the shallow waters near the breakers as a contented homeless man worked on his rusty old bike. I slept on the oil-sand beach until my face burnt into a panda-eyed mask and the tide washed my backside. David Byrne sang “same as it ever was” as I poked my head into a market selling alien sea-pods; I couldn’t have found his comment less accurate.

The red lights of Roppongi lit the dark black skin of the Nigerian hustlers as I stumbled through the timeless hours of a bottle of souchu and a mega-vitamin B (8000% DV). Clubs lit by flashlight wielding hostesses had dancers on every bar had me standing in some Coyote Ugly Asiana edition audition. Strong-7 beers from the 7-11 paved the road towards the beacon of the Tokyo tower. On the morning train I got off at the wrong stop because my travelling companion woke up and, startled, woke me up and we got off the train with no reason to think it was the proper city. After a 20 minute split screen story, both of us somehow winding our way back to the terminal, I popped in through closing doors right before the train left the station.

A massive sushi-go-round shot toy prizes out of a tube if you won the video game challenge match. I know. It was this random for me too so I am trying to give you a fair treatment. They serve blended crab brains.

Breaching the last step of a stone-shod mountain path a massive iron kettle of incense filled the air with a purple smoke. A chorus of chanting echoed in the acoustic halls of a Buddhist temple. Monkeys clamored in a nearby cage as my favorite tree species, the Japanese maple, showed its full watermelon-colored array of leaves. Behind the temple stood a simply marked path leading up a wooden stairway into the woods. I climbed these stairs for 30 minutes. The violent winds atop the meditative mountain whipped the thin paper ribbons into a flutter as the steel dragon spat spring water into an opaque pool. A neon jogger in full spandex buzzed by.

In the foothills, I checked into one of my beloved onsen resorts. The sulfurous hot pools felt good on my leech wounds. As I scrubbed myself clean before entering the tub I noticed the little bloodsuckers all over my feet and between my toes. It was a blood bath, literally, as I smashed and pulverized the resilient parasites so gorged on my blood. It was out of some horror film as the little monsters edged quickly towards me over the sudsy tile floor after been flicked off. After liquefying them with my shampoo bottle I was surrounded in bright red pools of my own blood. Time for a bath. Totally naked except for my silver ring, it too was transformed by these remarkable waters. Emerging from the spring fed tub my silver band had turned a luminous red-gold; I just kept staring at it and hoping (a hope bordering on prayer) that it would start to show bright red Elvish writing.

I awoke to write this as four men in a Honda minivan pulled over a sign advertising the local massage parlor and sent smashed glass into an otherwise peaceful 3:30am.

There is a café that is full of cats as the theme. There is a cartoon porno section in the newsstand. What the hell am I doing standing between them?

There and Back Again

Geysers bursting, thick plumes of sulfur billowing into the air,
Booming mountains reverberated in my heart under the shadow of Fujisan.

I headed west towards the beloved Japanese icon of Mt Fuji. Azalea lined train tracks brought me into a world of romantic natural beauty just 40 minutes from my home in the volcanic crater of Hakone. A funicular cable car carried me over the smoking sulfur pits of the Owakudani crater and to the top of a ridge of mountains that surround this remarkable diverse region. Black eggs, boiled in the sulfuric water pools that bubble and churn with geothermal gasses, are a delicacy here and prescribed for health and longevity. They taste pretty good too…not quite salty and not quite poison; a pretty good balance. After catching my breath at the first glimpse of Fuji on the horizon it was up the mountain.

The first trek was to Kamiyama, or “god-mountain”. The first leg was by far the most unique mountain path I have ever traveled due to its eruptive nature. Gasses and thick white waters flowed and hissed from sores in the burnt earth. Under the rickety wooden bridges toxic marshes and landslides were the norm. The soil was brittle and scorched. All around this acidic wasteland was hellish place with the power and beauty of an armored horse.

The route soon turned green and lush as I ascended out of the active pit. The trail, quite vertical at times, swiftly placed me atop a bulbous peak with a startling view of the snow-capped giant in the distance. Atop mount-god was (surprise) a shrine with stone markers and other weathered statues and icons. The descent was through a tunnel of subtropical biomass and a slick slide down reddening mud on the wet side of the mountain.

As the incline flattened out I came upon a stark blue lake. Mount Fuji, ever present, loomed over this oasis for fishermen and holiday seekers. Sailboats and men wearing rubber pants churned the otherwise perfectly placid lake Ashinoko. Along the shaded lakeside a path of mossy stones laid at the base of 300 year old cedar trees. These botanical gargantuan, whose girth was humbling to even the most confident twenty-something, had the worn smell of misty generations in their gnarled bark. Off to one side a huge red torii gate stood solid in the shallow mirror of water like the entrance to some long sunken water temple that, if I chanted the right words, would arise from the depths in a violent rumble.

Further down the road were set the remnants of feudal Japan’s most oft’ tread highway, the Tokaido (East Sea Road) which once served as the artery between Edo (modern Tokyo) and Kyoto. Once a major thoroughfare for all types of travelers, this historic route served as inspiration for countless poems and anecdotes from Japan’s Shogunate era. Its crooked stones, original and broken, made for much more difficult passage than most of my earlier terrain. As it must have been way back then, the traditional sake, tea and food station, Amezake Chaya, served unbelievable (and previously unheard of) bowls of hot, sweet rice-liquor-pudding. Invigorated to continue, the last three hours were fueled mostly by the desire to reach the final destination.


Arriving after a long days travel, the Japanese onsen, or geothermal hot-spring, was a heavenly reminder of the primary joy of hard work: the release from it. First all clothes are removed in an outer chamber. The body is thoroughly washed and scrubbed with a bucket and soap at a satellite location from the main tubs. Getting any soap into the actual hot-spring is a horrible taboo so the body must be completely clean and rinsed before entering. Everyone used so much soap that we all looked like a bunch of sudsy titans newly risen from some frothy hell. After a good 30 minutes of concentrated exfoliation and washing I entered the piping hot pool. The steaming waters were on a rocky outcrop overlooking a ravine with a flowing river below. I let my tired muscles melt into the subtle consistency of my surroundings: the trickle of the spring, the tweet of the day’s last sparrow. The trees whispered and hissed like fine rice paper in the wind as the sun set over the foggy hills.

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I added one new album (“Tokyo 2”) and updated the “Hiking Japan” album (Sooooo many more pictures) on Picasa.

Hope to update again soon.

T

Enter the Gaijin

Hello, everyone. Back to it I suppose. Hopefully my sautéed octopus breakfast will prove energizing fuel for an informative entry. By the way, "gaijin" means "foreigner" in Japan.

A lot has happened in the last few days, which have felt like months. I really hit the ground running here and haven’t stopped since. By now I have been here five days and have: set up and stocked my apartment with the necessities (wasabi sauce, a giant knife, a teapot, etc.), established my bank account, my alien registration card, my commuter pass, underwent a two day orientation, planned my first lesson, climbed a mountain, explored my city and visited downtown Tokyo. I am still spinning a bit from the completely sudden lifestyle and, although I am ecstatic, I'm whistling like the wind up bird.

First off, my apartment is amazing. It is like a futuristic life-support chamber outfitted for extended comfort. It is centrally controlled by a computer in the wall which speaks to me in Japanese when I make mistakes punching the interface with my blunted fist in frustration at not being able to get the hot water to turn on. This computer controls everything from the sink temperature, the light intensity, and the motion sensor settings, shower fan heat and duration, the front door, the door locks, and…the toilet is really one of those electronic singing ones…I shit you not. It is small but it has everything I need (kind of like Japan?). I call my restorative capsule the “Enetron”. Unfortunately it doesn’t feed me and even after a good night’s rest I am still hungry…

Shopping is quite an experience, as you might have guessed, but I have adapted a new philosophy which I hope will make it easier: toss things blindly in a bag then feast on it later. I think this might be the only feasible way to decipher what the hell it is that I am actually eating. Today I plan to have yellow squares and some red sticks with a bowl of ramen flavored with *&^%. The food is pretty amazing any way you slice it but slightly expensive for Western standards. I have really been enjoying the loose leaf green tea and the tuna filets. I also went out with my company contact, Mr. Sano, for a sushi meal and finally learned how to eat the stuff properly, which does actually make a substantial difference in the experience all around.

Sano has been a lifesaver. While the Japanese bureaucracy is quick and efficient, the general English level is prohibitive to any sort of errorless transaction. That said, I have never been so amused in a city hall office. The workers smile with huge grins, bob their heads in anticipation and flit around like busy bees from one station to another getting through customers faster than humanly possible and at the end they hand out everything with two outstretched arms and a bowed head. Even at the restaurants the staff seems to be buzzing across the room with intent. In general the people seem to be quickly moving from place to place but it doesn’t seem stressed. They move swiftly across roads, through shops and even up mountains but I don’t sense any urgency or worry.

I went with a few of the other teachers at my school to explore some nature reserves and we struck gold on the first try. We found our way to a mountain nestled hot spring house with a hiking trail into the mountains and valleys of Kanagawa. The mountain we climbed was magnificent. There is a Shinto shrine at the top and panoramic views of Tokyo sprawled below. It is about 20 minutes by bus from the Enetron and I am positive I will be going back frequently. It might be a necessary relief after the long days ahead.

The mountain were nice but central Tokyo is a wilderness all its own. Dazzling seizure-inducing displays illuminate the expanse of polished glass and concrete like some massive outdoor casino floor. People of all sorts, punks and suits, dart from place to place under the neon towers of this futuristic landscape. Extended bridges of white steel carry pedestrians through the treetops and over the river of cars below. Monolithic temples rest their stones aside the indigo glow of the skyscrapers. Seas of green parks abruptly intercede in the madness to bring fresh air into the chaos of a booming orchestra of movement and transaction. Everything is clean. Everything works. I spent all last night wandering the cybernetic streets of this harmonious techno-human settlement. Those are the initial impressions…wait and see how they change!

The work orientation was blah. I did learn a lot about the company, specifically, that the president has a hilarious sense of humor and, well, let’s say ultra-high self confidence. I met teachers from other campuses at the workshops who live around the city and am actually going to visit some of them today right after writing this. Which reminds me, I have a week off before I even start teaching! Because of the swine flu there is a delay in courses starting so I have to fill a week in Japan somehow… should be interesting.

I posted the photos from my historic first five days on Picasa. Sorry for the shorty…I’m not quite collected yet.

Thomas