Jidai Matsuri, and what it meant for my weekend

So there was October and November.

I haven't been keeping a journal because I haven't wanted to experience what's happening to me the first time through, let alone twice.  However, when something nice does occur and I want to blog about it, I find myself short of materials.  So I'll go with pictures.  First, the trip to Kyoto with Madeline Horan, who night-bused all the way down from Akita (a long way, about 700 miles; like Fayetteville to Chicago) in late October to see the autumn leaves together.  It seems that in Japan, though, the leaves peak in late November to early December, like leafy little mutants.  It was still a gorgeous trip, though.  Neither of us wanted to leave.

Cinnamon women, outside the old imperial palace.

 I wanted to go on one particular weekend to see the Jidai Matsuri.  For this Festival of the Ages, all the town dignitaries and droves of well-connected children dress up for a massive, two-hour parade showing the history of Japanese costume from prehistory through the Meiji period.  Think Renaissance fair with a much higher median income.

These guys probably own Toyota.

They also take the mortal remains of the last two or three emperors, and by extension their spirits, for a nice stroll.

That's an emperor.

In the center, a bit hard to see,  is a giant radish being offered to the dead emperors.  The Japanese couple standing next to me was like, "Is that...a radish?"  I reassured them that it was a very pretty radish and they giggled.  So you are not the only one who is confused.

There was something for everyone!  Unless what you wanted was a picture without other cameras in it.

Cute kids! Geijin photobomb!

Tourists in fox masks!

Armor!

Poor choices in footwear!

Archers!

Impractical war banners!

Look at banner!

Pretty Ladies!  Somebody sue George Lucas.

People overwhelmed by their hats.

People who fully live up to their hats.

And the mayor in a carriage, bein' Meiji.

It was hot, and bright, and I sat on gravel for three hours in a pink pencil skirt.  It was awesome.

Floating in the Dark; or, the philisophical maunderings about fish

Note: this is old.  I wrote it in the summer not long after I arrived, and was waiting for it to come together, but it clearly isn't going to.  I thought I would post it anyway in an attempt to get writing again.  One blog a month is a pretty lame target to miss; I'll try not to do it again.

The dark.  It is so dark around my apartment.  Humid and dark and fishy.  Old streetlights litter the area like broken drinks umbrellas on a sticky bar floor.  They are bent and shielded to prevent light pollution, which would be a nice thought if any of them were putting out light.  I can see the stars, dimly.  At first I thought I saw a comet, but I had it the wrong way round; it was a plane headed into Osaka airport with its bright front floodlight on.  A shooting star in reverse, consuming its own plume of light.  In the southwest there are strobing pink flashes of heat-lightning from behind the western mountains.  The clouds are such bulbous compact little masses, carrying their lightning curled inside like a filament.  Or maybe each is a modest chariot for the storm god Suzano-no-Mikoto (they do love their tiny cars here, after all).  Not very threatening, although I hear he's a bit of a bastard.  At least, Neil Gaiman seems to think so, and since he seems to know a lot more gods than I do, I'm prepared to take his word for it.

This really is a place of fish and fish-related industries.  My neighbor appears to have a goldfish-farm bubbling away in some half-barrels by her front door.  The whole area has crabs.  It had crabs like normal neighborhoods have squirrels, scampering merrily along the sidewalks, into and out of the open gutters.  One of my first nights here I stepped on one, I think.  Not sure what else that particular crispy squish could have been.  Most evenings I've been walking down the sand-crunchy sidewalks to the dock.  Mostly I just stand there, or sit with the sea lice and watch for jumping fish.  I can see fishermen out on the seawall casting for squid with red lights as their lures.  Tonight the wind was whipping my pencil skirt around, and how is there enough of a pencil skirt to whip in the wind anyway? 

Looking down into the dark water I wonder what it's like floating in warm suspension, a swift fragile dot on axis x y and z, a tiny point in time.  To me swimming in the open sea feels threatening; I imagine all the hungry creatures that could surround me on all sides.  But the fish can't feel that; they have neither imagination nor memory.  Untroubled by theoretical horrors, they exist in their single fishy moment, safe.  Their memory is stored in their genes, acting automatically, protein smoothly into protein, an unblemished record of survival in which only the successes are recorded.  I feel like I expend so much mental energy on regretting mistakes, criticizing my actions and affairs, wondering what to do moving forward – none of that has any place in our chemical memory.  At this moment we are a triumph.

When I was having an existential crisis this one time the only thing that got me through it was my conviction that, being already dead, I had no need to fear death.  An event with no degree of uncertainty, completely and untrendily without quantum, could surely be viewed as having already occurred.  If every dimension has an objective reality, there is a vantage point from which our lives exist as a perfect whole, complete, forever, a bubble floating in space-time.  I do realize that some rather bright people have already thought of this and named it “God,”  but I don't think the vantage point needs to be consciously occupied to exist and be meaningful.  Though that would be nifty, depending on whether the occupant/s were really our type of people.

 Note 2: I tried it again as a poem, with little more success.

See, that's what happens.   

The pier is crunched with sand, my bare toes enjoying their excursion 

two feet above the warm high tide and I hear the wet slap of jumping fish.   

Cold thrill-seeker, ride the poison air

or float there cradled in the hungry dark,

little silver dot on axis x y z.   

Shining point in time.  

You 

possible sardine of my address

you are the sum of every success, each flick of bony fan 

that kept your great-great-grandfish just beyond the barracuda's smile, 

every mindless twist by which your mother shaped

a silver hurricane's untroubled eye, and mocked the tethered sharks.   

All failures have dissolved in salt and carbon.   

Only you remain

ignorant above the void

a moment of triumph.

Apparently the fun in Japan is stored one island down from mine

Seriously.

On the Yoshino River, to be exact.  I think this post was supposed to be about Sports Day, which was charming, and the Japanese school system which, I can't even, but I'm still not clear on whether I can post photos of students on this blog and students are annoyingly hard to avoid at schools.  Please stay tuned.  In any case, following two weeks of solid, cold-sweat, battery-acid sickness and misery, I got a chance to chill out and be only mildly and sporadically sad!  For this I thank my fellow Awaji Island JETs, especially the impossibly sweet and gorgeous Ms. Wendy Yu, who organized a trip for six of us after the larger prefectural JET trip filled up.  Although I so far mostly detest where I live and what I do, I feel hugely lucky to have fallen in with such a friendly, varied, and sane(ish) grab bag of adventurers.

Note the "ish."  Hi, Ryan (right, bringin' the fun in).

 After a good half-day of driving for me - counting bakery detour, gelato detour, small getting-lost detour, and the worst cup of iced coffee ever squeezed from a sad embittered bean - we arrived in Central Shikoku.  The landscape is drastically different from Awaji Island, or anyway more: more vertical, more green, the forest even denser, darker, and mossier.

The gelato detour was worth it.  Cute interior, and berets!  Because when I think ice cream, I think wooly berets!

View from our guesthouse.

We were trying to figure out what these mountains reminded us of.  They were alpine-steep, round-topped and cloud-snagging like the Smokies, with tree cover somewhere between the New Mexico Rockies, Nordic mixed evergreen-deciduous woods, and jungley Taiwan...we finally decided that they looked like Shikoku mountains.  Green and purty and unabashedly mountainous.  Our guesthouse perched on a slope far above the river, a funky old farmhouse with beams smoke-blackened by the traditional indoor firepit.  We barbecued criminal amounts of food and encountered nature in the form of tiny limes and chestnuts, a praying mantis, and a huge mukade (Japan's dreaded poisonous giant centipede) which the boys enjoyed cremating with a blowtorch.

The pleasantly rustic facilities.

Nice, individual futons.  Ryan never did get his warmth pile.

Have I ever mentioned that, when I was a Girl Scout, our troop leader skipped town with every cent of the cookie money that was supposed to take us all to Colorado for white-water rafting?  I think that really happened.  Gentry was an interesting town.  So this trip was not only a fun outing but the Fulfillment of a Dream Long Denied.  (Okay: I have actually achieved rafting once before, in the Canadian Rockies, but it was veeery gentle.  I reminded Grant about it.  G: Really?  Me: Yeah, remember that picture that used to be on our desk?  G: Oh.  Oh!  Yeah, we did do that.  I wonder where that picture is?  So obviously, a thrilling adventure.)  This trip was much better because 1) it actually happened 2) legitimate slight possibility of death 3) bagel sandwich lunch 4,5,6) BAGEL SANDWICH LUNCH 7) jumping off huge tall rocks.  The company we used, Happy Raft, was fantastic: boho, warmly hospitable, competent, and did I mention the bagels. The fresh-baked bagels (Japan lacks for bagels). 

Also the name provided some justification for my waking everyone up at seven a.m., after a boozy night, with a hearty, "Rise and shiiiine, Happy Rafters!!!"  The sadist in me was pleased.

The trip itself is hard to describe.  Eating facefuls of spume (heh heh, spume), countless waterfalls tumbling down dark gouges in the vertical slabs of green, trailing my hand in cool blue-green water. Grey, green, blue.

Shit gets real.

These rapids are no joke, though.  We didn't get to take cameras with us (though they brought mine to the lunch spot), nor would they have survived the trip, but I will post some of Happy Raft's pictures as soon as I receive them.  I'm sure I made a variety of highly entertaining faces.  My mental state at the moment sort of precludes heart-racing thrills or deep enjoyment, but I definitely had a nice and relaxing time.  Afterwards for some reason we felt the need to document the moment, purikura style, sunkissed cheeks and ruffled hair and all.

That's Ryan eating Wendy's head, Anna, and me, with Minatsu and Cain below.

If I could wear these ears around in real life I totally would.

 Then there was Italian food, obviously.  Quite a ride. 

In which I begin my chic and refined living

So, to

This is written on my ancient washing machine.  The "urban" is a bit of a low blow.

(Slim my Cafemug)

and heavy my heart as I trudge through the days as I shall now relate...

I knew it.  IknewitIknewitIknewit.  You go and name a blog something like “A Catalogue of Light” and there is no way, no way, that it is not going to turn into a bitter joke.  No way in hell.  So, as promised, I am trying REALLY HARD not to transition directly into "A Catalogue of Woes" (English spelling retained for added pathos), but it's been tough.  Heretofore undiscovered, truly unpleasant, you-really-don't want-to-know levels of tough.  Hence my lack of posts.  Really, though; would you rather have nothing, or twenty pages of existential angst and philosophical maundering about fish?  You tell me.  'Cause I've got reserves.

Cultural Incident: this morning there was a man outside my bedroom window at six in the morning, mowing hay with some infernal hand-held machine, sort of like a giant circular saw weedeater with a backpack engine.  He was then raking the hay into rows.  With a rake.  A rake made of wood.  He appears to be about 80 years old.  End cultural incident.  

 

This is Bizarro-cat.  His name is Daifuku, which means “big luck.”  He is a sweet, friendly cat, but he will NOT. SHUT. UP.  All day, all night, maow maow maow mRRa’prauw lick maow bite lick lick cuddle paw MAAAAAUW.  Is it morally justifiable for a vegetarian to gag a cat?  Even if said cat is damaging her calm?  I’ve also never had an indoor/outdoor cat before, and his presence leaves me feeling distinctly unclean.  Which echoes my feelings for my apartment.  

The hell of wood paneling.  The entire downstairs (entry, washing machine, kitchen, bath, toilet) is covered in the most unconvincing metal trompe l'nul woodgrain I have ever seen.  On the mirror, upper left, is a drawing of a baby holding a shotgun.  Caption: "I believe my justice."

Entryway.  Thrill.

Office/living room with closets, bookshelf, and scuzzy couch suffering from pleather eczema.

Other side of the same room.  I actually love the floor-chair.

Bedroom.  This is where the laundry lives.  With a tiny washer, small wardrobe, and frequent rain, this indoor line is full 100% of the time, adding some much-needed humidity to my interior-scape.  Apparently, no sheets are currently made in Japan to fit this mattress, which is reasonable because it is crap.

But I have a tanuki!  So far he has failed to crush any of my foes with his giant swinging testicles, but I live in hope.

Exterior shot; more soon.  The grass out here is now above my knees.  Those of you with schoolboard experience can probably imagine the joy of having the country board of education as your landlord.

So, here it is, in all its glory.  Narrow, metal, old, hot.  The upstairs is not bad, just a little ragged (plus one room has these creepy gray baby hand-prints on the wall).  It has been a long time since I slept in the full summer heat without air conditioning; it’s actually been strangely nostalgic.  The discomfort of the whisper-thin, spring-sprung mattress, though, is neither nostalgic nor charming.  The reason I can’t sleep in the one air-conditioned room is difficult to explain without attaching a soundfile, but I’ll give it a go.  All the walls in my apartment have round vents with screens on the inside and heavy metal shutters on the outside.  These seem to regulate pressure somehow, gently flapping open from time to time and doing so more frequently and forcefully when the weather is changing.  The one in the air-conditioned living room, however, SLAMS at irregular intervals and incredible volume.  It shakes the walls and I can’t sleep through it.  

In lighter news, either I’ve finally stopped smelling like a racehorse with a glandular disorder, or I am losing the ability to perceive my own stench.  Really hoping it’s the former.  I have a beauty routine now that takes over an hour in the morning; hair, pretty clothes I hope, full make-up, tan pantyhose in the tropical heat...it's depressing.   

I can't confirm that it makes my make-up completely, but it is a really good eyelash curler.

Have I mentioned that Japan is the US in the 50's?  See upcoming posts for more details.  Suffice it to say that I am now putting more effort than ever before into my appearance, doing it while sick and from a home that makes me feel slimy.  I've had cockroaches, slugs, live lizards, dead lizards, dead mice, really dead mice, and lines of ants.  The cat tracks in dirt and grass.  Water leaks from…somewhere.  Drifts of white cat hair clump in corners. 

I went to Kobe last weekend and, among (too) many other things, bought a little cloth carrying case for two onigiri.  If you don’t know them, onigiri are the triangular rice balls that Japanese people often eat for lunch.   

Looking cute will not save you now.  Being filled with fish, now that'll do it.

There is no way I can justify having a special container for these objects, but it's charming and purple, and I put it on my kitchen table to cheer me up.  This morning, eating my Mild Chocolate cornflakes, I picked it up to bask in the pointless ownership and a lizard jumped out, onto my face.  We are talking about a harmless, 1.5 inch gecko here, but still, there was much gender-neutral squealing.  Somehow, this incident feels representative of my life here.  So forgive my unfocused post and tune in next week for tales from the Japanese educational system, provisionally titled How I learned to stop worrying and love bombing, or, The Sound of Silence.  Please leave any questions or suggestions in the comments.  Please talk to me.  Someone has to.

In Which is Explicated my Blog's Poncy Name

If I Cut Through These Woods

If I cut through these woods

The path will lead me back to that water wheel

The birds are crying dazzlingly

They may be a flock of migrating thrushes

With the southern edge of the Milky Way exploding

Radiant white throughout the night

With the fireflies streaming as never before

And, on top of that, the wind ceaselessly rocking the trees

The birds, agitated, unable to sleep

Are naturally making an awful racket

Yet

All I did was take a step into the woods

When the cries became more furious

Sharper, like a sudden downpour

What bizarre funny fellows they are!

This is a large cypress forest

With slivers of sky quivering various ways

Breathing here and there

Between each and every pitch black branch

Messengers, so to speak, of a catalogue of light

 From every possible era that is or ever was

              ...I stand in a daze, aimless

              in the birds' clamour...

The path flows dimly white to the opposite end

And Mars, muddy red, rises

From a hollow in a clump of trees

Two birds somehow slipped in unobserved

Then flew away cheerfully squeaking

Ah, the wind is blowing, carrying warmth and silver molecules

And the touch of every possible tetrahedron

When the fireflies fly in ever greater chaos

The birds' cries become denser

I hear the voice of my dead little sister

Coming from the edge of the woods

              ...even if it isn't so

              there's no need to rethink this

              for there's no difference between any of us...

The sultry fume of grass and the scent  of cypress

The birds' now-deafening racket

What are they clamouring about with such fervour?

The people drawing water to their paddies

May cautiously walk the woods' borders

The stars in the southern sky may stream steadily down

Yet there is no particular danger here

It's all right to sleep your quiet sleep.

-          Kenji Miyazawa

              Better late than never (possibly), I begin my blog chronicling this year in Japan.  Hunting for an appropriate title, and reluctant to compete with the thousand iterations of “My Year in Japan,” I decided to use a line from my favorite Japanese poet, Kenji Miyazawa.    The trouble was that his most blog-title-esque lines were either incredibly pompous (“The Phenomenon Called I”) or came from really depressing poems about death and despair (“Departure on a Different Road,” and don't think I wasn't tempted).  I settled on “A Catalogue of Light” because it's from my favorite poem of Miyazawa's – actually, one of my all-time favorites – and because this blog will inevitably fill with pictures once I get a working internet connection.  I'm a lazy writer.

              I don't feel worthy to tear into the poem itself, considering the small but fiercely educated audience I'm writing for, so I'll just say that I love it and recommend reading more of the poet's work, if you ever have the time.  He regards the natural world through densely interleaved lenses of lyricism and science, peering up through the microscope as well as down, feeling his own place in the ecosystem while he dissects it, creating vivid landscapes that bleed into and out of his own consciousness.  The poems are electric with atomic forces, myosis, beating flagella, and, well, electricity, as well as emotion, and remind me of Blake and Whitman.  Anyone need a publication?

              So, I'm in Japan, because of poetry and language and creeping inadequacy.  I've already had to answer the question, “so, why did you decide to come to Japan?” a few dozen times, and I've fallen back on a pat but incomplete answer: I came because I like studying Japanese, and because I enjoyed teaching in graduate school, so this was a great **opportunity** (what a bullshit word) to combine two of my interests [!!!insert appropriate number of exclamation points, depending on audience!!!].  What I really mean, more or less, is this.  I was so miserable in graduate school, increasingly so after the first two years, and studying Japanese was one of the few things that kept me afloat.  It was challenging, nuanced, satisfied my need to learn, and felt like nothing else in my life.  It also gave structure to my days, which otherwise would have consisted mostly of dreary lab work and, worse, the guilty, terrified avoidance of same. 

              Teaching came at the very end of my higher education, after it had become clear that I would never finish a degree and while I was scrambling to put off reality for just one more year.  I'd always filed teaching away in the “Never Ever Ever” column, between rocket science and professional golf, but I adored it right from the start.  I loved to see the faces, learn the names, know that each name and face held a mind, and try to find some way, any way, to jolt that mind into action.  Maybe that sounds reductive, or dismissive of my students, but it isn't meant to.  It was thrilling.  I had to be confident, be in charge, be interesting.  But I couldn't carry on teaching without more training, which I just couldn't face. 

              So, then the chef gig, which made a welcome change, although I soon became bored.  I snapped more and more often into “zombie state;” maybe you've met it?  Maybe you do it.  Maybe everyone does.  Going weeks, months, in a twilight equidistant from happiness and depression (though there was plenty of that too), feeling myself diminishing, growing plodding and dense.  I can't remember much from the past three years. 

              I'm trying to start again, and so far it really, truly sucks, which is making it difficult to write.  Or at least, to write with any prayer of holding your interest.  EMOOOO!!!  I can feel the bangs crawling into my eyes.  Soon I will break out in gauges, and we can't have that.  So tune in next week for lots of amusing pictures of cats, funny Engrish, and a free guided tour of The Hell of Wood Paneling!  I love and miss you all.  Yes you, even if we haven't seen each other in years.  Please comment if you don't believe me; I'd be glad to list your awesome qualities at length.  Ja, mata ne! (translation: Later, gators.  Gatren?  Gatorii.  It doesn't matter.  Nothing rhymes.)