Dearest readers,
It has been nearly two weeks, I believe, since I last wrote on this blog. My sincerest apologies. Life has moved far too fast for me to have a minute to just sit down and type about how crazy it is.
I had one of the best weekends of my life in Tokyo two weekends ago. I went up with my friend Kelsey via the night bus on Friday night and came back via night bus on Sunday, meaning we had about 40 hours in Tokyo to take in as much as possible. To that aim, we took off immediately upon arrival for the Daibutsu in Kamakura. It took about an hour and a half to train then train then bus there, so we arrived at about 9 am. That was awesome; there were no crowds to obstruct our view of one of the biggest outdoor bronze Buddhas in the world. The Daibutsu is a bronze casting of the Amida Buddha (think Pure Land) that is probably 70 feet tall and 600 years old. People have been praying to him to save them for the last 600 years, just as I prayed to him to save me last weekend. He has the most peaceful expression on his face. I imagine he sees us like we see the clouds, buzzing trough the earth so fast in our best attempt to remain unenlightened, but he is still and calm and happy and enlightened and has been for the last 600 years. I'm an agnostic atheist (I don't know if there is, but I assume there is no God and try to live morally without a divine decree to do so) and I have never had an urge to pray before, except when I was faced with the star on the ground in Bethlehem where Jesus is supposed to have been born. I was so in awe that I prayed to him twice, once before and once after we went inside. Oh, did I mention that? You can go INSIDE the giant Buddha for another 30 cents. It's the same bronze that has been there for 600 years! I was in a Buddha belly! OMG!!!!
After that, we met my friends Rikiya and Nanako in Harajuku, then went to the Meiji shrine and shopped around Harajuku. There was so much cheap neon clothing! If you know me, you'll know that I was in heaven. I haven't seen Rikiya and Nanako in about four or five years; they were exchange students at Marin Academy for a month during my sophomore year. Thank God for Facebook! I tagged them all in a post saying that I wanted to come up to Tokyo and Rikiya offered me a place to stay. It was amazing. It was crazy, too, because now I'm much better and Japanese and we could have serious conversations and found that we really get along quite well. They took us out to dinner - we tried to pay, but the INSISTED - and then his mom picked us up at the train station in her Prius (I was reminded of home, mom!). They had bought us delicious sushi - the best sushis I have had in a long time! - and we had a lovely conversation for a few hours, finding commonalities and shared thoughts that transcended continents and cultures. We're all people! We all like to laugh and hate it when the neighbor's dog wakes us up. It's good to recognize that that is true.
In the morning, Shogo (his cute as a button little brother!) made us bacon and eggs, trying to appease the American in us, I guess. It was delicious. In the morning, we drove around to various shrines and temples near the Oguchi's house (that's their last name). The highlight of it all was meeting the curator of a Buddhist art museum attached to a thousand year old temple and getting a free tour. We were the only ones in the building and everything was absolutely beautiful. There were sculptures of Ashuras and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and oni and the King of Hell (he has different names so I don't know which one to used), beautiful paintings of the Buddha's death and various parts of his life, incredible mandalas - the famous two for the Shingon school - and a giant gold statue of Buddha that was totally breathtaking. Then the curator, who was also an artist-in-residence at the temple, took us back to his shop (past a tree that was planted there 600 years ago) and gave Kelsey a give of a lotus flower with its seed removed and beautiful woven multi-colored balls put in their place. While we were talking with him, the head priest of the temple showed up and we all talked (in Japanese, of course!). He's a flute player and so we talked a lot about music. I think he was happily surprised that I could understand him. I was happily surprised that he took the time out of his day to converse with little ol' me. After all that, Rikiya's mother dropped us off at the train station and we spent the day walking around with Shogo and Rikiya, taking in the sights and eating some food. We went to Asakusa and Akihabara, chilled around Tokyo station, tried to avoid all the rain from the typhoon that was blowing in (yeah, that made for an interesting night bus ride...). We did a lot of things that I did on my MA trip but I was totally OK with it because it was still as beautiful as it had been and Kelsey had never been to Tokyo before. The MA trip hit the important parts of Tokyo and I'm glad I got to go there again.
In other news, I was expecting the night bus to be a relaxing bus of some kind. It wasn't. Both to and from were just normal buses with very little leg room and very potential for sleep. It was the strangest nights' sleep I have ever gotten. I feel like half the time I was hallucinating; definitely, all of my dreams took place on the bus. Kudos to Kelsey, who had a quiz AND a test the morning we got back. The night bus from Hiroshima was SO MUCH BETTER. I could extend my legs all the way instead of curling up into a weird ball. I actually slept. やった！
I also played one of the best shows of my life on Friday. As I may or may not have already mentioned, I rehearsed for almost every spare minute of my past two weeks with my Japanese friends Minori and Kaoru, and damn, did the show go off well. I played for about two hours (longest show I've ever played!). I was only planning on playing for an hour and a half (two hours with a half hour break), but both sets ran a little bit over and we jammed on some blues to get people psyched before both sets, so I only had enough time to go downstairs and grab a beer before I went back onstage. Minori and Kaoru totally killed, making sweet epic face-melting solos at all the right times, and we had an impromptu drummer! A guy named Bruno was there a little early when we got there to practice and he's a classically trained percussionist. There was a djembe-ish thing lying around and he joined in during the practice and I told him to just sit in, which he did for about half the songs. It really added another layer to have percussion instead of just guitar. The best part about the show, though, was the audience. There were about fifty of my friends and acquaintances, which was enough to pack the second floor of Cafe Istanbul to the extent that you couldn't really walk around. Everyone was drinking and listening and talking and having a good time. They were also eating up everything I was playing/singing. I would sing a song (either mine or someone else's), and no matter if people had been talking to their friends or not at some point during the song, everyone would explode into applause when I was done. I felt like a rock star. I could do no wrong. They were all chanting "Tennessee, Tennessee" at the end of the show (after an unrehearsed encore of 'Stairway to Heaven') and I almost exploded inside. Everyone sang to the songs they knew, probably 8-10 songs including such seminal classics as "Fuck You," "Santeria," "Three Little Birds," "Hotel California," and "Hey Ya." "Hey Ya" was my favorite (probably everyone's favorite) because it was the last song and everyone got up and started dancing. The floor was shaking. Seriously, the floor was shaking. Oh, and I had free drinks all night and got paid. Yeah, it was the best night ever. The only problem was that I only got about three or four hours of sleep because I was going to Hiroshima the next morning, catching a bus that came at 6:30.
Hiroshima was really heavy, as it was the last time I was here. I have had images from the Peace Museum in my dreams for the past three years; seeing them again in person was incredible. As we were walking past the A-Bomb Dome, some of the people I was with were smiling and taking pictures by the river. I couldn't. All I could think about - all I can think about - is that river full of dead bodies sloughing their skin. And these girls were smiling and taking pictures in front of it and I could hardly look. I was getting sick to my stomach. "Tennessee," they asked me, "why are you being weird?" I couldn't answer. I said something about it being really heavy and that they should probably just wait until the go to the museum. The didn't understand and laughed and sure enough when we were listening to the bomb survivor speak they were crying their eyes out.
It was an incredible privilege to hear an atomic bomb survivor speak. She told her story and minced no words but didn't exaggerate either. She didn't need to exaggerate, didn't need to raise her voice to make her story heart-wrenching. She spoke of being in a factory with her classmates and being one of 6 who got out alive, being trapped in the rubble as a fire burned towards her, trying so hard to escape, using her headband to turnicate her friend's arm that was bleeding out, looking around the wreckage of thecity and wondering if they were the only ones alive, watching people wander aimlessly in circles and then die in front of them, mothers clutching the dead children, people dying because their bodies couldn't handle the water that they were given. I was reminded again why I am a pacifist.
That night we stayed in a hostel by Miyajima, the island with the giant orange torii gate that sits in the water that you've probably hear about and seen pictures of. Here is when life stopped being heavy and started being really fun again. We met a bunch of backpackers from Europe and America and got drunk with them and exchanged stories. I woke up with a friend and we watched the sunrise over Miyajima from the shore. It was beautiful. We had the privilege of travelling with two of the only Japanese students to go on the trip. I sit with them every Tuesday and Friday and so does my friend Jen, so I'm sure they felt more confortable with us. I am trying to hang out with Japanese people while I'm here, so I'm super happy that we were able to travel together.
We got to Miyajima super early to catch the low tide so that we could walk out and touch the torii gate itself. After that we hung out around the island for about 7 hours and almost went to the aquarium until we realized it wasn't free at all, ate some good food, saw a lot of gaijin from Kansai Gaidai (who were all in the area for the Hiroshima trip), and pet the deer. The deer in Miyajima are super friendly because no one ever hunted them (the island in more ancient times was only inhabited by priests/monks) and they like being petted and trying to steal the food out of your bag or just trying to steal your bag because it probably has food. My favorite part of the day, I think, was wandering upriver towards a spot with tons of small waterfalls. It fell like it would have been a sacred area for one who followed Shinto. I picked the biggest waterfall and sort of baptized myself, and we all sat around and noticed the first leaves on the Japanese maples beginning to turn red. It's almost autumn here, and the days are getting cooler and shorter and I'm sure in a few weeks the world will be alive with color before it dies again.
I've been noticing something that I think is related to the interdependent culture of Japan (as opposed to the more independent, ego/I-driven culture of the West). I will say something, and people who are listening to me/who I am talking to will repeat what I say word for word at the same pace. It's like an echo chamber, and initially I was really confused but now I've realized it's completely cultural and natural. I don't know if it is assent that the person heard you, or if the person is saying it because it is their opinion as of the time you said it. If it is the former, it's a great though somewhat longwinded way of saying "word." If it's the latter, then I feel like it stifles opinions because everyone agrees with the first person to express an opinion. I haven't decided/don't know if I as a gaijin can know what it is. More to come.
Much love. Thanks for making it to the end of this long-ass rant.
It has been nearly two weeks, I believe, since I last wrote on this blog. My sincerest apologies. Life has moved far too fast for me to have a minute to just sit down and type about how crazy it is.
I had one of the best weekends of my life in Tokyo two weekends ago. I went up with my friend Kelsey via the night bus on Friday night and came back via night bus on Sunday, meaning we had about 40 hours in Tokyo to take in as much as possible. To that aim, we took off immediately upon arrival for the Daibutsu in Kamakura. It took about an hour and a half to train then train then bus there, so we arrived at about 9 am. That was awesome; there were no crowds to obstruct our view of one of the biggest outdoor bronze Buddhas in the world. The Daibutsu is a bronze casting of the Amida Buddha (think Pure Land) that is probably 70 feet tall and 600 years old. People have been praying to him to save them for the last 600 years, just as I prayed to him to save me last weekend. He has the most peaceful expression on his face. I imagine he sees us like we see the clouds, buzzing trough the earth so fast in our best attempt to remain unenlightened, but he is still and calm and happy and enlightened and has been for the last 600 years. I'm an agnostic atheist (I don't know if there is, but I assume there is no God and try to live morally without a divine decree to do so) and I have never had an urge to pray before, except when I was faced with the star on the ground in Bethlehem where Jesus is supposed to have been born. I was so in awe that I prayed to him twice, once before and once after we went inside. Oh, did I mention that? You can go INSIDE the giant Buddha for another 30 cents. It's the same bronze that has been there for 600 years! I was in a Buddha belly! OMG!!!!
 |
| The Daibutsu in Kamakura |
After that, we met my friends Rikiya and Nanako in Harajuku, then went to the Meiji shrine and shopped around Harajuku. There was so much cheap neon clothing! If you know me, you'll know that I was in heaven. I haven't seen Rikiya and Nanako in about four or five years; they were exchange students at Marin Academy for a month during my sophomore year. Thank God for Facebook! I tagged them all in a post saying that I wanted to come up to Tokyo and Rikiya offered me a place to stay. It was amazing. It was crazy, too, because now I'm much better and Japanese and we could have serious conversations and found that we really get along quite well. They took us out to dinner - we tried to pay, but the INSISTED - and then his mom picked us up at the train station in her Prius (I was reminded of home, mom!). They had bought us delicious sushi - the best sushis I have had in a long time! - and we had a lovely conversation for a few hours, finding commonalities and shared thoughts that transcended continents and cultures. We're all people! We all like to laugh and hate it when the neighbor's dog wakes us up. It's good to recognize that that is true.
In the morning, Shogo (his cute as a button little brother!) made us bacon and eggs, trying to appease the American in us, I guess. It was delicious. In the morning, we drove around to various shrines and temples near the Oguchi's house (that's their last name). The highlight of it all was meeting the curator of a Buddhist art museum attached to a thousand year old temple and getting a free tour. We were the only ones in the building and everything was absolutely beautiful. There were sculptures of Ashuras and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and oni and the King of Hell (he has different names so I don't know which one to used), beautiful paintings of the Buddha's death and various parts of his life, incredible mandalas - the famous two for the Shingon school - and a giant gold statue of Buddha that was totally breathtaking. Then the curator, who was also an artist-in-residence at the temple, took us back to his shop (past a tree that was planted there 600 years ago) and gave Kelsey a give of a lotus flower with its seed removed and beautiful woven multi-colored balls put in their place. While we were talking with him, the head priest of the temple showed up and we all talked (in Japanese, of course!). He's a flute player and so we talked a lot about music. I think he was happily surprised that I could understand him. I was happily surprised that he took the time out of his day to converse with little ol' me. After all that, Rikiya's mother dropped us off at the train station and we spent the day walking around with Shogo and Rikiya, taking in the sights and eating some food. We went to Asakusa and Akihabara, chilled around Tokyo station, tried to avoid all the rain from the typhoon that was blowing in (yeah, that made for an interesting night bus ride...). We did a lot of things that I did on my MA trip but I was totally OK with it because it was still as beautiful as it had been and Kelsey had never been to Tokyo before. The MA trip hit the important parts of Tokyo and I'm glad I got to go there again.
In other news, I was expecting the night bus to be a relaxing bus of some kind. It wasn't. Both to and from were just normal buses with very little leg room and very potential for sleep. It was the strangest nights' sleep I have ever gotten. I feel like half the time I was hallucinating; definitely, all of my dreams took place on the bus. Kudos to Kelsey, who had a quiz AND a test the morning we got back. The night bus from Hiroshima was SO MUCH BETTER. I could extend my legs all the way instead of curling up into a weird ball. I actually slept. やった！
I also played one of the best shows of my life on Friday. As I may or may not have already mentioned, I rehearsed for almost every spare minute of my past two weeks with my Japanese friends Minori and Kaoru, and damn, did the show go off well. I played for about two hours (longest show I've ever played!). I was only planning on playing for an hour and a half (two hours with a half hour break), but both sets ran a little bit over and we jammed on some blues to get people psyched before both sets, so I only had enough time to go downstairs and grab a beer before I went back onstage. Minori and Kaoru totally killed, making sweet epic face-melting solos at all the right times, and we had an impromptu drummer! A guy named Bruno was there a little early when we got there to practice and he's a classically trained percussionist. There was a djembe-ish thing lying around and he joined in during the practice and I told him to just sit in, which he did for about half the songs. It really added another layer to have percussion instead of just guitar. The best part about the show, though, was the audience. There were about fifty of my friends and acquaintances, which was enough to pack the second floor of Cafe Istanbul to the extent that you couldn't really walk around. Everyone was drinking and listening and talking and having a good time. They were also eating up everything I was playing/singing. I would sing a song (either mine or someone else's), and no matter if people had been talking to their friends or not at some point during the song, everyone would explode into applause when I was done. I felt like a rock star. I could do no wrong. They were all chanting "Tennessee, Tennessee" at the end of the show (after an unrehearsed encore of 'Stairway to Heaven') and I almost exploded inside. Everyone sang to the songs they knew, probably 8-10 songs including such seminal classics as "Fuck You," "Santeria," "Three Little Birds," "Hotel California," and "Hey Ya." "Hey Ya" was my favorite (probably everyone's favorite) because it was the last song and everyone got up and started dancing. The floor was shaking. Seriously, the floor was shaking. Oh, and I had free drinks all night and got paid. Yeah, it was the best night ever. The only problem was that I only got about three or four hours of sleep because I was going to Hiroshima the next morning, catching a bus that came at 6:30.
Hiroshima was really heavy, as it was the last time I was here. I have had images from the Peace Museum in my dreams for the past three years; seeing them again in person was incredible. As we were walking past the A-Bomb Dome, some of the people I was with were smiling and taking pictures by the river. I couldn't. All I could think about - all I can think about - is that river full of dead bodies sloughing their skin. And these girls were smiling and taking pictures in front of it and I could hardly look. I was getting sick to my stomach. "Tennessee," they asked me, "why are you being weird?" I couldn't answer. I said something about it being really heavy and that they should probably just wait until the go to the museum. The didn't understand and laughed and sure enough when we were listening to the bomb survivor speak they were crying their eyes out.
It was an incredible privilege to hear an atomic bomb survivor speak. She told her story and minced no words but didn't exaggerate either. She didn't need to exaggerate, didn't need to raise her voice to make her story heart-wrenching. She spoke of being in a factory with her classmates and being one of 6 who got out alive, being trapped in the rubble as a fire burned towards her, trying so hard to escape, using her headband to turnicate her friend's arm that was bleeding out, looking around the wreckage of thecity and wondering if they were the only ones alive, watching people wander aimlessly in circles and then die in front of them, mothers clutching the dead children, people dying because their bodies couldn't handle the water that they were given. I was reminded again why I am a pacifist.
That night we stayed in a hostel by Miyajima, the island with the giant orange torii gate that sits in the water that you've probably hear about and seen pictures of. Here is when life stopped being heavy and started being really fun again. We met a bunch of backpackers from Europe and America and got drunk with them and exchanged stories. I woke up with a friend and we watched the sunrise over Miyajima from the shore. It was beautiful. We had the privilege of travelling with two of the only Japanese students to go on the trip. I sit with them every Tuesday and Friday and so does my friend Jen, so I'm sure they felt more confortable with us. I am trying to hang out with Japanese people while I'm here, so I'm super happy that we were able to travel together.
We got to Miyajima super early to catch the low tide so that we could walk out and touch the torii gate itself. After that we hung out around the island for about 7 hours and almost went to the aquarium until we realized it wasn't free at all, ate some good food, saw a lot of gaijin from Kansai Gaidai (who were all in the area for the Hiroshima trip), and pet the deer. The deer in Miyajima are super friendly because no one ever hunted them (the island in more ancient times was only inhabited by priests/monks) and they like being petted and trying to steal the food out of your bag or just trying to steal your bag because it probably has food. My favorite part of the day, I think, was wandering upriver towards a spot with tons of small waterfalls. It fell like it would have been a sacred area for one who followed Shinto. I picked the biggest waterfall and sort of baptized myself, and we all sat around and noticed the first leaves on the Japanese maples beginning to turn red. It's almost autumn here, and the days are getting cooler and shorter and I'm sure in a few weeks the world will be alive with color before it dies again.
 |
| Look! I'm holding up the massive torii gate in Miyajima! |
I've been noticing something that I think is related to the interdependent culture of Japan (as opposed to the more independent, ego/I-driven culture of the West). I will say something, and people who are listening to me/who I am talking to will repeat what I say word for word at the same pace. It's like an echo chamber, and initially I was really confused but now I've realized it's completely cultural and natural. I don't know if it is assent that the person heard you, or if the person is saying it because it is their opinion as of the time you said it. If it is the former, it's a great though somewhat longwinded way of saying "word." If it's the latter, then I feel like it stifles opinions because everyone agrees with the first person to express an opinion. I haven't decided/don't know if I as a gaijin can know what it is. More to come.
Much love. Thanks for making it to the end of this long-ass rant.
