3 Months in Japan

Going Back...

2012-01-31T10:17:00.000+09:00

The idea being that next time I am in Japan (later this year!) I will be posting people hardcopy photographs made into postcards, from places I visit. each postcard will have a QR Code (a kind of two dimensional barcode) which you can scan with the camera on your iphone or android phone with the assistance of a small app you can download for free ( such as NeoReader ). the QR Code is actually a web link to an audio clip, recorded in the place the photograph was taken.

if you have an iphone, try it with the image above. download NeoReader on your phone, click on the image above to view the full size version, (or the qr code will be too blurry to read), scan the QR code in the bottom right corner, and see where it takes you. If its all working, it should take you Here.

Of course, if i manage to do this, you will be scanning the QR code on a real postcard you got in the mail, not an image on a website. :)

back to the bump and grind...

2008-08-02T08:50:00.002+09:00

one month back in oz now.

Im starting "internet lessons" with Kakizakai, where I record myself playing the piece I'm working on, and email him a copy of the recording, and he sends me feedback.

Here is a link to the first of these - the piece I'm currently working on is called "Takiochi", which translates as "cascading waterfall". I cant play it from memory yet, so this recording was made while playing from the notation.

The recording isn’t so good - I was using a stereo mic setup so it was aligned up-down instead of left-right - I was hoping to get a better range of the sound this way - but I think I was too close to the mic, so it was very sensitive to any horizontal movement - there are a couple of phrases that sound a bit muffled, where I must have leaned to the side a little. Next time I think I will just sit back a lot further from the microphone. I got a bit ragged towards the end of the piece - pitch control went out the window a bit, but its a lot better than it was a week ago.

anyway, its a start...

:)

Braaaains!

2008-06-09T18:59:00.006+09:00

Ben: You know the abandoned places in japan website? Well, it turns out this place is local to me! Someone told me how to get there today. I'm going to check it out...
Dave: Cool!

D: Hmm. Decaying, abandoned hospital. Played silent hill?
B: Noooo!
B: No no no!
B: No zombies
D: They only show up on video
B: So ill leave my camera at home
D: Then you won't be able to see what's biting your neck...

B: Hmm. I need some disposable companions.
B: I'm a main character. I have to survive. At least until I get to sacrifice myself heroically to save the female lead at the end.
D: You could be the guy in the opeing scene who gets dismembered spectacularly to set the mood...

B: If I'm the prelude, then the main movie is you coming over to find out what happened to me...
B: Maybe the climax of the movie is you facing the zombie-boss, who is actually me.
B: appealing to my last shred of humanity
B: causing me to not eat your brains, and instead hold back the zombie horde while you get away, before detonating the explosives.
D: That works pretty well for me...

B: I'm not sure if ill go up today yet - the weather is looking dicey, and I don't want to get stranded there by a sudden typhoon...
B: It's about 40kms from here, out in the middle of nothing but mountains and forest.

D: Man, you ARE starring in a horror flick!
D: Surely you can think of some compelling reason why you need to be in the area
B: Why do I need a reason. There's nobody around, right? right?!
D: Is it a nuclear powered hospital? Maybe the reactor is about to blow and only your unique blend of technical expertise and wisecracking dark edged humour can cut through the red tape in time to save the beautiful Japanese zombie princess!
B: Ooh! I like the sound of that!

B: But then, maybe my parents didnt tell me everything about my origins...
D: Aha! mystery man! Maybe you are half human, half zombie, with the powers of both.
B: and a strange compulsion to visit a decaying research facility out in the middle of nowhere in Japan...

B: Drawn there, by who knows what
B: But its stronger now...
B: Don't you see! I have to go!
B: It's my only chance to understand these dreams!
B: To end this nightmare! once and for all!!

D: Every hundred years the call goes out, and the undead hordes converge, making their horrid shambling way to the ancient gathering grounds. There they hold the worlds biggest dance party / experimental performance art show, and the chosen one is crowned with the mysterious and eldritch Brain Helmet.
B: Braaaaaains!!
B: I went to a reggae festival yesterday. does that count? I don't even like reggae...

D: Were there zombies?
D: Also, reggae vs Japan? who won?
B: Haha. It was a good match. I think I have to give this one to Japan, though. Reggae put up a strong effort, but in the end, it wasn't really a fair fight.
B: Was a good vibe tho. Lots of fun on a beautiful day. Good for throwing frisbees and running around.
B: I mean who can compete with Japanese kids high on a sunny day, singing along to English tracks that they only have a sketchy understanding of the meaning of...

B: The Beatles... "A rub is all you need!"
D: ROFL!
B: Which was spot on if you ask me...

B: Do you think my chances of survival would be improved by downloading and watching Resident Evil before heading out to this abandoned research facility?
D: Definitely. Also the House on Haunted Hill.

B: If I die out there, I'm so coming back to get you.
B: Your brains are soooo sucked out, and your ancestors haunted till the end of their days...
D: :D
D: So long as I pass the video tape of your demise on within seven days I should be ok.

B: Oh no. You don't get out of it that easily. In 20 years time, you and all your classmates are going to get together for a reunion and im going to kill you all one by one.
B: AFTER I've eaten your brains
B: THEN you'll all come back to life 24 hours later, and I'll take you out and give you to the hillbillies...

D: Will I survive, a broken man, to tell my tale to any who will listen through a haze of turpentine fumes?
D: In between paying for my next bottle of unleaded by doing hedge-trimming jobs with my stump-mounted hand chainsaw
D: it makes picking your nose unbelievably hard

B: Yeah. Maybe. But every 5 years, you'll turn into a zombie werewolf and roam the streets until you are captured by a research facility and taken to the secret underground lab somewhere outside chichibu, japan...
B: And so on for 5 or 6 sequels...
B: Then they'll make a movie about your sorry tale, but the cast of the movie will start dying in unexplained accidents.
B: So you better hope I come back in one whole, human, happy piece.

D: Haha! Well, ok. At least I hope the incubation period is long enough that I get to see the photos...
B: I'll post them to flickr with my last human gasp.
B: Hmm. Maybe I should wait until just before sunset before going up there.

B: Seems like the smart thing...
D: Make sure your headtorch hasn't got too much charge in it, it would be a shame to waste the opportunity of navigating around using only the flash on your camera
B: Ahh good plan. I'll just leave it switched on for a few hours now.
B: And I'll make sure the scooter is almost out of fuel too...

tom's place, and back

2008-05-28T21:12:00.007+09:00

At Tom's place, much time was spent playing in the workshop, trying different flutes, and just keeping up daily practice.

Tom had repaired the utaguchi (mouthpiece inlay) and made a few modifications to my new flute, a nishakunanasun (2.7) that I had picked out earlier this trip, at my request. A few 'safety' bindings on the top half to ensure it wouldnt crack on me, and a slight widening of the mouth hole.

I finished Sokkan, the piece I was working on with Kakizakai on this flute, and am now revisiting Shingetsu. I enjoy alternating new pieces with going back to add another layer of refinement to ones ive already learned - there's always improvements to be made, and new levels of understanding and focus to reach.

While at Toms, the last few days of a major Sumo tournament were being televised. So at about 5 o'clock each afternoon, we parked in front of the telly with cups of tea and enjoyed watching Kotooshu, a Bulgarian, become the first European to win a major tournament.

This crazy thing is a wasp's nest, just outside the window of Tom's workshop. the large one is about 60cm in diameter. There werent many wasps around though. the layers of different coloured mud are quite incredible. I can understand the wasps getting different coloured mud from different places at different times, but the way the patterns are in this seems much more deliberate than that. Maybe it was an artist's colony.

Sunday afternoon saw me back on the scooter and heading for home, with a plan to take it easy and camp out somewhere halfway home. I was thinking about somewhere high up, with a good view of the sunrise. As I was coming back over Mugikusatoge pass, in foggy weather, I was looking for a potential spot, and I happened to glance down off the side of the road while coming around a corner, straight into the eyes of what could only be a bear - though it looked more like a very very large, shaggy wombat to me. I decided that maybe i would camp a little further on, perhaps somewhere closer to human habitation...

So I ended up at a lookout, at 1800m with a wonderful view. I pitched my tent once the sun was down, cooked up some pasta on my camp stove, and watched the clouds fill up the valley below. An early night, and up at 4am, to watch the sunrise...

Odd though - I woke up at 4am, but could hear people around outside the tent, and the sounds of equipment being set up. I stuck my head out and found half a dozen Japanese photographers with all their camera gear set up, trying to catch that perfect sunrise moment. Not what I was expecting, but the view must be well known.

Its lovely being up that early. the roads are empty, the light is beautiful and everything is so still.

I left the lookout at 5am, and had a wonderful ride home with the morning sun coming out and warming me nicely (its cold at 1800m!). I was home by 8am, and ready for breakfast. Not a bad way to start the day :D

I knew the scooter would give me freedom to explore a bit more, but I really had no idea it would reward my investment in it the way it has. The experiences it has enabled are worth a million times more than what I paid for it.

Over the hills and far away

2008-05-26T19:55:00.003+09:00

This is where I woke up this morning...

I've been on a bit of a road trip. Decided the weather looked good, so 6am last friday morning saw me head out on the scooter, loaded with camping gear, off to visit my friend Tom, the shakuhachi maker, in Nagano.

Route 299 would take west me over three high passes, before I turned south down Route 152 towards Tom's place. The first pass was the one that took me out of the Chichibu basin, and out of Saitama prefecture and into Gunma. The roads were wide and well maintained, until the beginning of the climb that took me over the second pass, Jukkokutoge, just on 1400m.

This was the view back the way I came, just before the top of the pass. The road was mostly single lane, with some damage in places, and a couple of small repair teams at work. As you can see from the photo, there isnt much out this way but trees and mountains. The road was narrow, but lovely, and the scooter took me up at a steady 30km/h without too much complaint.

I became quite attached to the Route 299 signs, feeling little surges of enthusiasm at the sight of them. As well as indicating that I was on track, each one seemed to promise even more wonderful things than the last. this was especially true of the ones leading up to Mugikusutoge pass, which at 2127m, was the highest point on the trip.

The tree above was up on the pass, which still had a good two feet of snow on it (thankfully not on the road). The bark had this amazing pattern, colour and texture. Anyone know what kind of tree it is? They only seemed to grow right up on the top of the pass. the bark on a lot of them was peeling in layers, like a paperbark tree, but the layers were so fine you could see through them, but still quite strong, unlike paperbark. A bit like wood shavings from a very fine plane.

From there, it was down to civilization again, before heading south up into the mountains again along Route 152, which is the back way to Tom's place, and another wonderful piece of foresty mountain goodness...

Kakizakai

2008-05-09T10:17:00.002+09:00

This is my teacher.

Dont mess with him.

He's Badass...

Lame Excuses for not updating the blog

2008-05-02T21:05:00.003+09:00

I was away.

I was visiting friends.

I was sick.

I was busted trying to sneak into a top secret research facility.

I was stuck in traffic.

I needed to buy some new shoes.

Samurai Penguin needed my help.

I needed to go for a walk.

I needed to get out and enjoy the sunshine.

I was in a hurry to get somewhere.

I have to practice.

Minoyama Sunset

2008-04-15T20:12:00.002+09:00

It was a gorgeous warm spring day today. I was able to open all the windows in the van and enjoy the warmth. Bummer about having to work though. About 5pm it just got too much. I had to get out and enjoy it just a bit. So, I got on the scoot and headed out of town in the direction of Minoyama, one of the mountains that surrounds the Chichibu basin. Its the purple camera symbol in the top right of the map below.

View Larger Map
From up there, you can really see how Chichibu really is a basin, ringed by quite high mountains. There are some smaller 'ranges' inside the basin that separate the Arakawa river valley (in which Chichibu-city is) and Ogano to the west. From down in chichibu, you dont really get an idea of the overall geography.

But from the top of Minoyama, its wonderfully clear...

And the Big Love Bike is living up to its name and showing me the love!

Fixed!

2008-04-12T11:33:00.007+09:00

I decided to have a look at the brakes myself, so i took the caliper off. The brake pads are almost new, but whoever changed them botched it. one of the two metal clips that help hold the pads in place hadnt been put in properly, and was being wedged against the disc, causing the nasty scraping noise and further damaging things.

you can see on the photos where the clip has been worn away. I filed off the sharp edges, and put the clips and the pads back in properly, and Voila! no horrible scraping noise! I just need to bleed the brakes now (the clip must have somehow been wedging the pad in more) and all will be well! :)

In answer to Kirsty's comment, the Garmin-compatible english language map of japan comes from a place called UpUpDown. Its not bad - has two mapsets, road/nav, and topo. on my particular gps, the topo can be overlaid over the roadmaps, providing a nice combo. The only thing that is a bummer is that it doesnt have street names.

One of my missions tomorrow is to get a better helmet. the one that came with the bike would be fine, except that its missing the visor. its also very secondhand looking. never a good thing in a helmet...

I'll leave you with my favourite page from the Saitama Prefectural Police Traffic Safety Textbook...

"You must not reel along drunkenly on the road, rush out in front of cars or interrupt other pedestrians"

Chichibu City 680

2008-04-11T12:10:00.007+09:00

a.k.a. The Big Love Bike. Complete with hello-kitty pink numberplate.

Its a Yamaha Grand Axis 100. 0.1 litres of 2-stroke freedom. Its got just over 6000km on the clock, and was purchased for the princely sum of 90,000 yen - just over $900 Australian. Sure, it has some issues that need sorting. its missing a pair of side panels that fit under the footbed on either side, and it needs the front brakes looked at - bled, and maybe the pads replaced. But Kakizakai has already located the panels secondhand on yahoo auctions, for about $20 for the pair off a wrecked bike, and the mechanic is going to look at the brakes tomorrow for me.

Of course, after picking it up yesterday, it immediately rained all day. So this morning was its first proper outing. Up to the Myuzu-Park lookout and back. Which also gave me a chance to test out the Garmin 60CSx mapping GPS unit and the Japan map pack... :D

Sakura

2008-04-07T21:31:00.003+09:00

Last Friday saw me head into Tokyo to see the Sakura (Cherry Blossom) - which was reported to be in full swing.

I'd heard that there was a large park in Shinjuku - Shinjuku Gyoen - which was pretty reknowned for its sakura. There were a few other possible places I could have gone, but I was also planning on walking from Shinjuku down through Harajuku to Shibuya, so this one seemed pretty good.

I had stopped off and bought the makings of a picnic at the huge Seibu department store in Ikebukuro (where the train from Chichibu terminates in Tokyo) and was pretty hungry by the time I got to the park. The photo above is the grove where I had my lunch. The trees here were very old and very large, and every time a gust of wind blew, it would snow flower petals. Really quite otherworldly...

Of course, I wasn't the only person who had the brilliant idea of heading to the park for a spot of hanami on a gorgeous spring day. Luckily though I'd come in one of the less prominent entrances to the park, so that grove was much quieter than the insanity going on over the other side of the park - but I'll save that for tomorrow's blog entry. Lots of kids gathering bags of petals, and just being kids.

Though of course, there will always be some that are totally focussed on their own worlds...

Rubik's Cube was completely uninterested in the spectacle. His father was desperate to get a photo of himself amidst the blossom, and at one point after failing to his attention, dad came up and hung his expensive digital SLR around the boys neck and went over to where he wanted to be photographed. The kid didnt flinch - just kept on going with the cube...

The petals on the ground were amazing - gusts of wind would blow them like snow, into drifts and piles against tree roots, picnickers, or any other stationary thing. you could literally see the gusts of wind ripple across the ground, stirring up the fallen blossom.

And being spring, of course the other trees weren't just sitting still. The momiji (japanese maple) that are my favourite, and which I have seen go through the fabulous colour changes of autumn before losing their leaves, have sprouted vibrant new growth too.

There were other unusual flowers hiding amongst the trees too...

I'll continue the story tomorrow, in which I discover that the other half of the park is somewhat more populous, and continue on my way down to Shibuya.

Woosh!

2008-04-05T09:46:00.003+09:00

A fraction short of 160 MEGA bits per second! that was while downloading a windows update from microsoft. fastest ive seen my connection run yet. I wonder what it is actually capable of?

The biggest problem is that the rest of the world cant keep up...

First week

2008-04-01T21:55:00.008+09:00

Wow. I've been here a week already! Despite no lessons for the last few days (Kakizakai went on holidays to Taiwan for a few days) I've settled into practice well. I'm enjoying the piece I'm working on (Hifumi Hachigaeshi) and its coming along nicely. Not far off memorising it.

I managed to get out on the bike a bit on the weekend. Did a 30km round trip west down the valley to the white bridge and then back on the other side of the river. I stopped at a temple called Seiun-ji, which is apparently famous for its weeping cherry trees - but not quite in blossom yet though. next weekend maybe.

Lots of (what I think are) magnolias out at the moment though - very pretty. Can anyone confirm this from the photo? (click on it to see a large version)

Kakizakai says the sakura is big in Tokyo at the moment. Hopefully it lasts until the weekend. He also think this weekend will be peak time in Chichibu - but the weather has been pretty weird. Yesterday was freezing - rain here, snow on Buko-san. Today was clear but insanely windy.

Its an interesting challenge being here. There are no other foreign students here at the moment - I haven't seen any other westerners at all. Its a bit like a solo retreat - no distractions, but care and focus required so that the isolation doesn't become overwhelming. It feels good though, and I feel very clear headed. Its nice to have the time and space for thoughts to come and go, and come again, developing a bit more each time.

I came across a great quote in a book by Murakami that I've just finished -

"In this world, there are some things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with someone else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount."

If I had a Macbook Air, I'd have frozen to death...

2008-04-01T09:33:00.004+09:00

Lucky for me, my trusty half-ton laptop has an industrial strength power supply that has an auxilliary function as a foot warmer! I shall now perform computationally intensive tasks to prevent hypothermia...

It was cold and rainy, with lots of low cloud. When the cloud lifted, it revealed that what was rain down here in the valley was snow on Buko-san!

Timelapse Clouds on Mt Buko

2008-03-28T12:11:00.005+09:00

This is a small timelapse movie I made this morning. I used some hacked firmware on my Canon A650IS, which allowed me to run simple script that takes a photo every 2 seconds until I press a button on the camera to stop it.

I then used a program called Slide Show Movie Maker to take the individual images and put them together into an AVI movie.

I then used VirtualDub to clean things up a bit - tweak the contrast, etc.

uploaded to google video - sadly the compression they use makes it a bit chunky. the original version is bigger and much smoother. still, better than nothing!

and there you go. about 2 hours compressed into 2 minutes...

A Map

2008-03-27T18:13:00.003+09:00

View Larger Map

Heres a google map that ive added some things to. Ill add more as time goes on.

Transitions

2008-03-26T12:01:00.008+09:00

I feel like I've misstepped into a slightly alternate universe. I'm in Japan, and Chichibu, but not quite the same one as I left last time...

The flight over was great - a brand new Airbus A330 with 2-4-2 seating. Comfy seats, and the only empty seat on the flight was next to me, so I had both an aisle and a window, and was able to put the middle armrest up and sleep lying down(ish)!

Flying into Japan at sunrise is something worth having a window seat for. A low mist covered the ground, but some things poked up above. power line towers, smokestacks, giant wind turbines. Ethereal. And gorgeous!

Our plane was first to land, and i was through immigration and customs in a flash. Only issue then was that the first Skyliner train into Tokyo didn't come for another hour and a half. So I decided to jump on a "local" train - which takes two hours instead of one to get into Tokyo, as it stops at every single station. I didn't mind though, as I alternated between dozing and watching the various groups of commuters ebb and flow. Japanese trains provide a wonderfully rich soundtrack of squeaks, hisses, groans, whirrs and squeals, which then gets added to depending on passenger density by sneezes and snuffles, book page flipping, foot shuffling and quiet chatter. I could have pulled out the recorder, but was enjoying it all in a sleepy traveller's haze just a bit too much to move.

Across Tokyo, only to discover that because of a track problem on an intersecting line, the Red Arrow (Express train to Chichibu) wasn't running. So onto another local train. Here again, the feeling of being in an alternate universe took hold - I swear they have changed some of the station names on the Seibu Chichibu line.

Still, I was in Chichibu by lunch time, and I decided to walk from the station to the Kakizakai's place. Haruka (eldest son) opened the door and got a surprise to find me there and leaped out to give me a huge hug. Lunch with Kaoru, Megumi and Haruka was just what was needed, before Haruka - who has just got the japanese version of his P-plates, drove me around to the caravan, under the somewhat nervous supervision of Kaoru ;)

Luckily for Kaoru, Haruka is about to start studying Physics at university, so if it survives the next week, the car should be safe for a while - the party on Monday night will be to both welcome me to Chichibu again, and to farewell Haru, who will be living on campus.

So, im settled in the slightly alternate universe caravan. Its chilly, and there is still a bit of snow visible on top of Mt Buko. Spring is on its way though - blossom and new growth starting to appear on trees. and they've changed the midday song too. i guess its a seasonal thing...

Third trip

2008-03-19T12:51:00.002+09:00

I'm off to japan again. Three months, but this time in spring rather than autumn. It was going to be less, as patchie and I miss each other a lot, but as she pointed out to me - last time I was just making significant breakthroughs after two months, so to have to come home at that point would be a shame.

the Sakura Forecast is estimating the first cherry blossoms to open in tokyo on the 26th of march. I arrive on the 25th :) so I should be there for the full cherry blossom experience. Expect lots of photos...

a very quick noodle

2007-04-22T10:58:00.000+09:00

more noodling.

Flights of imagination

2007-04-08T08:02:00.000+09:00

This recording is a bit of something raw. I was playing around, not working on a piece, just playing with the sound and different fingerings. I hit on something i liked, and just worked with it for a while (hence the repetitive nature of the recording).

So its not a piece, but an exploration. Something that could/might develop into a piece, with some work.

so there are pauses, stops, a few 'interesting' notes :) and a lot of repetition with small tweaks.

comments? i usually spend at least some of each practice session doing things like this. worth sticking up here? or should i stick to proper pieces?

Sanya (Mountain Valley)

2007-03-30T09:04:00.000+09:00

Please forgive me for this poor excuse for Sanya. Pitch problems, not finishing phrases smoothly, etc... :( but i'll put it up, warts and all - and it will really serve to give me incentive to do better.

Ralf, a friend who also plays shakuhachi, made some recordings at the Aus. Shakuhachi Festival back in October 2004 as part of some research he was doing. He sent me this. Its a recording of me playing a piece called Honte Choshi (the Chikuho school's version of Hon Shirabe).

It blows my mind listening to that, and comparing it to what I play like now. Im pretty hard on myself when assessing my performance - so its pretty cool to have a recording like that as a yardstick for progress.

Another interesting coincidence - today was the first time I heard that recording, and its been about 2 years since ive played any Chikuho-ryu pieces, but I noticed that in the last few days, a few interesting changes had crept into my Hon Shirabe. On listening to Honte Choshi - those things are present in it! Spooky! ;) Listening to Honte Choshi has also revealed where certain distinct features that are present in my Hon Shirabe originate from - it seems they were part of Honte Choshi, and some bit of me remebered them and felt they worked well enough to keep.

Hon Shirabe

2007-03-29T19:09:00.000+09:00

Another Hon Shirabe. its something i always play at least once every time i practice, so if im not happy with whatever else ive recorded, this will usually be the fallback.

It's a great piece, often described as both the beginning and the end. the first honkyoku usually taught to a student, and simple in structure - no ornaments or flourishes - but also nowhere to hide. no flashy fingerings to hide poor pitch control behind. the name is often translated as "original piece" or "original search", but also "basis for enlightenement" or simply "beginning".

Kakizakai's says here: "This is a demanding piece because if our inner energies are not gathered, the image will be limited, as if to see only the tip of an iceberg." and he's right. if you havent been practicing, or your condition isnt good, then it will show up in this piece, clear as day.

Its also a great reference piece, for judging progress, and differences in your condition from day to day. Also for comparing different instruments.

Sometimes i try out different things - like the barebones version from last time - or sometimes different things just come out on their own. but for each player, i think it settles into a form that suits them, maybe changing a bit as they change and improve.

also today, i recorded a version of Sanya, Mountain Valley - but i wasn't really over the moon about it, so i'll try it again tomorrow and see if its any better. :)

Rising to the surface

2007-03-22T09:17:00.000+09:00

Its been a long, long three months since I returned from Japan, and Ive been guilty of lack of contact with friends and family, neglecting my flute practice, sleeping too much, and other such crimes against life. But, its time to get on with things.

There is a shakuhachi festival in Bisei in Japan in August this year. Its run by Yokoyama and his school, and may represent the best chance I'll have of meeting and learning from him. JetStar have cheap flights from syd->osaka now too. So a few weeks holiday to go is do-able. This will also help give me something to focus my practice towards. Bronwyn has a baby now, and is not teaching for at least another month, so I dont have weekly lessons to kick me along. the last two weeks have seen me get back into the flute, though a bit erratically, but the sound is good, and it feels great.

In an effort to provide an incentive to practice daily again, im going to try an experiment. I've been recording pieces as part of my practice, and ive put a few up on my website. I am going to try and put up a new recording every few days. Of course, because you guys might be listening, I will want each one to be better than the last - which ought to result in a similar effect on my amount of practice as upcoming lessons have.

i still need to get some webspace sorted to put these files, but for now, ill hang them off the webpage and link to them from here. So, have a listen if you like and if you have any comments, let me know.

here's the first recording: Hon Shirabe, bare bones version, as usual, recorded in the bunker at Middle Head.

Patchie and the Giant Peach...

2006-12-19T17:58:00.000+09:00

Well. more of a traffic cone than a peach. But still very big...

We had fun

2006-12-15T12:17:00.000+09:00

Myself, Patchie and Megumi. Just before I took patchie off to the airport.

Bubble Man II - Soda Planet

2006-12-15T12:05:00.000+09:00

My life is richer knowing that Bubble Man II is out there, keeping the Soda Planet safe from harm.

Buddhas on the road

2006-12-12T19:02:00.000+09:00

Today, Megumi took us out to temple #4, in Yokoze. It's known for the many, many statues of the buddha, and kannon (quan-yin), large and small, filling its grounds.

Patchie!

2006-12-12T11:59:00.000+09:00

Apologies for the lack of posts. Patchie is here :)

A week of Chichibu and the festival, then off to Kyoto we went. A small hiccup in the form of being told our rail passes were invalid when we tried to use them - we immediately contacted our travel agent, who contacted the issuer, who pointed out the fine print saying they must be used within 3 months of issue... the result being that we paid for shinkansen tickets to Kyoto, and will get the price of the passes refunded when we get back to Aus. Travel agent was very embarrassed.

Here are a few choice bits of Kyoto.

First up is the Bruce Pee "Ill Store" (Extra Dope Wear Select Store)

Sadly the khaki-camo, puffer-jacketed, baggy-panted, cornrow-dreaded shop attendant was incapable of standing still, so he is a bit blurry. Just extrapolate from the shopfront and you should be ok though.

We discovered that they put some very strange stuff in the air in bike tyres here. either that or it was something in the water we were drinking...

Someone with great senses of drama and humour designed the signage that is stuck onto the smoker's butt-bins in designated smoking areas.

Theres a whole set of these - more to follow in another post.

Back to Tokyo after 3 nights, for a couple of nights staying with friends in Tokyo. Here's a "Where's Wally" image for you. Patchie on the famous Shibuya crossing...

Some Japanese pink...

We walked from Ebisu, where we were staying, to Harajuku and back, on a rainy Saturday. Yoyogi Park, normally teeming with Japanese and tourists having fun outdoors was completely empty. The rain also knocked a lot of the already ready-to-drop leaves from trees. The yellow in this photo is ginko leaves...

The crazy fashion kids were a bit subdued by the weather in Harajuku, but we did visit a few of the more interesting shops. Favourites was the Punk shop, where despite the Sex Pistols playing on the shop speakers, it was a far cry from tradtional English punk - not a splotch of vomit to be seen, and any rips and creases placed with zen-garden precision. Very amusing.

No photos allowed however. I did manage to sneak off a shot in a crazy costume shop though.

Autumn in Kyoto, Part 1

2006-11-25T23:11:00.000+09:00

After visiting Tom, I headed for Kyoto. This time of year it's especially beautiful - the colours are just luminous...

The first morning, I visited a place called Nanzen-ji, in the east, and followed a trail up behind the temple way up into the mountains. Right on the top was a wonderful, dense forest of tall, slender trees - cypress or cedar, maybe. I couldn't resist pulling out the flute and playing for a while.

Partway up the trail, I came across this. Its a waterfall shower, for brave monks who wish to get closer to nature...

It looked like it would be quite refreshing. The kind of refreshing where you feel so alive you can only stand it for a split second before involuntarily leaping around yelling, flapping your arms and gasping for breath... :)

Later, I trekked out to one of my favourite places in all of Japan - Koto-in. I'd timed my trip perfectly and the garden was stunning.

Beishu Mei Shakuhachi

2006-11-21T12:37:00.000+09:00

Weekend before last, I went and stayed with Tom Deaver, at his place up in the mountains above Matsukawa, in Nagano. He had been out visiting friends, so he picked me up from a train station half way there, and I got to enjoy a great scenic drive up(down?) the river valley and then up to his place.

Autumn was in full swing, and the colours were great - there had been a strong wind through a day or so before, and the less-travelled roads up near his place were literally carpeted yellow.

Tom is a Shakuhachi maker, and my 2.4 flute was made by him - obtained on my last visit, a year ago. This is his workshop:

A wonderful, comfortable place, up high in the barn attached to his house. during the day, it looks out, more or less onto the view in the previous photo. Tom told me that over in that mass of green somewhere is a temple, and at a certain time of the day, the light reflected off the temple's roof shines directly in the window.

In the evening, Tom left me up there to play, and try any flute I liked, finished or not - a wonderful experience to play so many flutes back to back. Very quickly I found a 1.8 flute that seemed to really stand out for me - I found it easy to get a good strong sound, while still having a lovely woody, airy natural voice. It was by far the flute I most enjoyed playing - much more like my 2.4 in character than my current 1.8.

There was another flute there that I also liked - a 1.8 that was 'nobe' - translates as 'total' - meaning it was a single piece of bamboo - not in two pieces with a centre joint like most shakuhachi.

The next morning, Tom told me about wanting to take closeup pictures of some of the detail in the bamboo and joints of the flutes, and so I took a bunch of flutes outside and took some for him...

the next two shots are not flutes, but the root-ball of the bamboo that is cut off the end when the bamboo is being prepared.

Normally something that would be chucked out, Tom has polished a few of them up - a deceptively large amount of work - and they are just wonderful things to pick up, hold and look at.

After lunch, it was time to go - I had plans to be in Kyoto, though in that present reality I would much rather have just stayed there. Maybe next visit... I really enjoyed the time spent there with him. Cheers, Tom.

Sunrise Dreaming

2006-11-09T21:02:00.000+09:00

Sunset, Moonrise, Sunrise

2006-11-09T20:35:00.000+09:00

This is where I watch the sunset from, most days. When I first arrived, this field was full of tall grass and other plants, well over my head. At the end of summer, a local farmer comes out in his tractor and mows it. by the end of next summer, it will be over my head again. Its a lovely spot, and there is a regular bunch of people who always seem to be around just on sunset. I think we all belong to Sunset Club.

I've been neglecting the blog a little - not for lack of things to write and photos to show, but the opposite. So much stuff the weight of it is overwhelming. So I took a bit of a break.

Tomorrow I'm teaching a bunch of high school kids some basic shakuhachi along with one of Kakizakai's other students. Saturday and Im off into the mountains of Nagano to see Tom Deaver again, the flutemaker who made my long flute. From there on to Kyoto, to really soak up some Autumn colour and revisit a few favourite places. :)

The photo below is actually sunrise, very near my house one misty morning last week. More to come soon. I promise...

12k/line tour - Ryoudenji Temple

2006-10-30T11:55:00.000+09:00

What can I say, really. Ive been wanting to see Richard Chartier and Taylor Deupree play live for a very long time. Both number amongst the few artists whose new works I buy unheard.

And Ryouden-ji! what a wonderful venue for such music. From what I gathered talking to Richard, the son of the resident monk is a music lover, and the monk himself seems to wholeheartedly support his son's efforts to bring musical events to the temple. All up a pretty rare combination.

It was quite a hike from Chichibu - three trains, then bike. The event was supposed to start at 4, but I got there very early - about 2pm.

They were still setting up, so I headed up behind the temple to do some flute practice. It was lovely to hear the playful sound checks - It sunk in then that this was to be a pretty special gig. Someone was playing lovely patterns on a vibraphone, and I played along quietly on the shakuhachi for a while.

I finally met Richard Chartier, who ive talked to on email, and we chatted for ages. His music has always been a source of inspiration and an object of contemplation - quiet and subtle, even when at times confronting and intense. I made him a piece of jewellery a while back, and in return, he gave me a bunch of CDs of his (at the time) unreleased work. He's as lovely and as interesting in person as his music suggests.

His set was great - all the lights out - and the incidental sounds of the night - crickets, people talking, a PA announcement echoing through the streets - all blended in beautifully. When he started to play, the crowd was scattered, and lots of people were in the courtyard talking. by the time he finished, it was dead silent, and everyone was rapt.

Richard also introduced me to Taylor Deupree, another long time favourite artist, who I was surprised to find knew my name from all the email ive sent buying CD's from 12k and Line. He said it was always nice to put faces to the names and email address of the people that buy his work over time.

Also a very warm and relaxed guy, we chatted on and off during the night. He performed with Tetsuro Yasunaga, from Minamo, and together they made a gorgeous piece from sounds fed into their systems live through a mic. bells, some kind of squeezebox, thumb piano, harmonica, all blended together and reworked into something a lot more than just a collection of sounds.

The temple setting really seemed to bring something special out of all the artists. A much more appropriate venue for this kind of music and listening than a pitch-black painted smoky club with sticky floors and nowhere to sit.

For me, the big surprise of the evening were "Trico!" (pronounced Toh-Ree-Coh) - A duo of guy on double bass, and a woman who played accordion, toy piano, harmonium and also sang. Their whimsical warmth and brilliant musicianship gently knocked me off my feet. Very deeply moved.

Things wound up, and people slowly wandered off. I chatted to Richard and Taylor, thanked everyone for their performances, and then headed off on the bike to find a local park to camp in :)

Camping, suburban Tokyo style. I got up early next morning, and played on the trains for a while. Morning peak hour with my bike in its bike bag was interesting. but I got home, still on a huge high from the event that has continued on since.

And, riding back from where I camped near the temple, to the train station, i also found what is now my favourite manhole cover so far...

Polkadot Jersey

2006-10-22T19:34:00.000+09:00

I've been doing a lot of riding in the mountains lately. This weekend I've covered around 100km, all of it enjoyable. Even the unintentional addition to my trip up the valley on Friday, where reason prevailed over sense of direction and sent me in the opposite direction to where I needed to go, adding about 20km to my day's ride. It helps that ive been able to just set my own pace, and the Love Bike's super new gears make a big difference.

Today, I visited what will become my Other Favourite Temple. Saizen-ji, just out of Yokoze, which is the next town along the road into Tokyo from Chichibu.

Its a lovely, quiet place with the most gorgeous Momiji (Japanese Maple) I think ive seen anywhere in Japan. Its very large and very old, and Im really looking forward to revisiting it as autumn progresses, to see it change colour.

I tested out my new camp stove sitting on a wooden bench underneath it - cooked up udon noodles in a miso broth.

While I was there, a few other folks passed though - of note was an old Japanese guy, who pulled out a case that had half a dozen harmonica in it and proceeded to play a gorgeous song, which on asking turned out to be a song about Momiji...

Inspired by that, I waited till noone else was around and pulled out my flute and played a bit. I've had a bit of a breakthrough in the last week thats made a big improvement in my playing. I think its now probably good enough to air in public, but I'm still a bit shy, especially in a lovely place like this, where the feeling of quiet is part of what makes it. So I played the first half of Sanya very softly, then headed for home. [update: Ive been told the tree is over 600 years old!]

But not before stopping in at the wonderful home-made Ice Cream shop that Megumi took us to last time I was here. Real matcha (green tea) ice cream is pretty special stuff :)

I swear! it was 10 feet tall and covered in brown fur!

2006-10-19T17:42:00.000+09:00

So there I was, down by the river, and I look up and maybe a hunnerd and fiddy yards further up I see somthin move. I slowly pull out my camera, but it startles and jumps inner the river. I got this one shot of it afore it vanished inter the bushes on the other side.

Now I knows nobuddy is gunna believe me, but I seen it. I seen it all right...

Address

2006-10-18T12:58:00.000+09:00

For anyone who wants to post me anything while I am here,

my address is:

Ben Dixon
368-0034
Hinoda 1-3-42
Chichibu-shi
Saitama
JAPAN

and if you want to call and have a chat, I have an Australian SkypeIn number that connects via the net to my computer here. the number is (02) 8003 4905. its a local Sydney number - so if you are in sydney, its a local call. if you are interstate, you pay whatever it would cost you to call a Sydney landline.

Beware of Quicksand While Fighting Fires!

2006-10-16T16:14:00.000+09:00

It happens when you get carried away with the hose. Water goes everywhere, mixes with the sand and makes a slurry and before you know it, your firefighters are up to their necks in it.

High Density Living

2006-10-15T20:47:00.000+09:00

Paradoxically, thats what I'm doing. Out here in this sleepy mountain town.

My days here are just so full to bursting with good stuff its sometimes hard to keep a lid on. :D Take today, for example. I'm not going near yesterday, when I rode my bike into Tokyo... Tomorrow, ill tell you about Yesterday

As an experiment, im going to put the photos in reverse order, ending at the beginning and beginning at the end...

Today. Slept in (Tokyo yesterday required sleepin today...) Got up. showered. Tried to figure out what proportion of baking powder to flour was needed (no SR flour here) to make fluffy pancakes. Every meal an adventure here. Lots of pancakes.

Glorious day outside.

So its onto the bike and away...

I had a vague plan. Revisit Hossho-ji, my favourite local temple. this involves winding my way up and over the pass - hard going in parts, especially on the way back - and down into the next valley, then out along another fold to Temple Number 32. Hossho-ji.

I can tell you that it is almost exactly 15km.

Exactly because the Love Bike has a cycle computer now. Almost because I had the inevitable 'unexpected exploration' and had to backtrack a little.

I had a bit of a moment today, while sitting high up looking down and out over a heavily forested valley. I'm studying a favourite piece at the moment, called San Ya (Mountain Valley). It has a quality thats hard to describe - restrained? careful? subdued? but yet... something

What I realised was that the only way - the only real way - to understand this piece was to go and sit in the late afternoon stillness on a clifftop, overlooking a valley dense and rich with trees, and play it. And theres that instant thunderbolt of understanding. This - this here, now, sounds echoing down the valley, careful! dont disturb the stillness, yet still filled with the warmth and love of that afternoon sun wanting to burst out. but quietly, gently. part of the stillness. not apart.

Obvious, really. but not till you've done it.

Daha was similar, but its understanding came slower (though somehow still a surprise) - a piece about the ocean and waves. I practiced that most days back in Sydney in the mornings after dropping Patchie off at work. Crazy traffic - no point joining in. So I did an hour or so practice, sitting by the sea. Playing while looking at the water and the waves. watching the ripples and flows. patterns in the reflections. sounds of the surf.

I stayed up top till sunset, and completely unintentionally (really! - im not kidding here!) played the last note of Sanya just as the last of the sun winked out behind the mountains. Good Stuff. Getting to the heart of things.

And like i said at the start - rich. dense. full of life and love.

Which, of course, is how I ended up in the bath :)

Looking in the window

2006-10-12T12:30:00.000+09:00

Just wondering who is actually reading this. It'd be cool if you could leave a comment on this entry, so I know who is listening.

Speaking of listening - I've added an auto updating list of music to my blog (look in the sidebar, on the right, down the bottom), and what im currently playing (via a clever last.fm plugin for winamp) for anyone interested. ive been finding quite a bit of interesting new music of late. Of note is the new EP by Murcof, whose recent stuff has been just a little patchy if you ask me. in line with this is the new one - Cosmos, two tracks of which are gems, and the other two very iffy.

You might have also noticed the neat row of photos below the title - its a Flickr badge. shows a random selection of photos from my Japan 2006 photoset on flickr. I did experiment very briefly with a javascript based animated badge, but decided that the movement kept pulling attention away from the rest of the page.

Warm in the arms of the Autumn Sun

2006-10-11T21:45:00.000+09:00

The rain stopped and the sun finally came out, and the weather has just been stunning. Blue sky, warm but not hot, still. The whole place feels happy. Sounds of kids playing and people gardening. Awesome mountain sunsets with layers of mountains...

Today's lesson was a good one. I finally managed to play Daha half decently. I got the "your understanding of this piece is very good..." comment from Kakizakai that indicates his satisfaction, and feeling that its time to start a new piece.

I'll keep playing it every day as part of my practice - its a wonderful piece, and one I'd like to keep in my able-to-play-on-demand repertoire. As Kakizakai says, my understanding is good, but the piece needs polish. So I'll keep playing it, and over time hopefully it will become as smooth and lovely to touch as an old river stone.

All Summer in a Day

2006-10-06T12:08:00.000+09:00

When I was in primary school, my class went on an excursion to see 2001 A Space Odyssey - A film which of course totally blew our minds :)

Before 2001 came on, a short film was screened, about a planet where it never stopped raining.

That film - All Summer in a Day - was such an intensely beautiful, moving experience, that it still echoes in me today. Even now, i come across people who I discover have also seen it, and been moved by it, and knows what a treasure it is. I'd go so far as to say that two people who have seen it share something very special. An understanding, a feeing, i dont know what. But its there - I can feel it.

I didnt realise its significance at first - I was only a primary school kid - though I felt it move me, I was soon rushed off on the trip that was 2001. That was back when time went slowly, and school holidays were a wonderful eternity that never ended.

It was based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. Its proving near impossible to find a copy of the film. A copy on 8mm film exists at ACME - the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, in Melbourne, and I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to borrow it and show it to my friends, and belatedly give them the gift that was unknowingly given me.

It would be easy to look the film up on wikipedia, and spoil it by reading the plot summary. I think that would be a shame though...

Since I got to Japan, it hasnt stopped raining. Yesterday late afternoon, I decided to put on my wet weather gear and venture out. I walked around in the rain, a Self-Contained-Unit, happier by the second to be outside in spite of the weather. I felt like a space explorer wandering around on the surface of an undiscovered planet :)

Evolution

2006-10-04T23:15:00.000+09:00

When I first got the love bike, it looked like this...

But it had short cranks, made for Japanese legs. The single front chainring was too small - severely limiting top speed, and the solid steel cranks would have made a great boat anchor. So some friends sent me a set of longer mountain bike cranks, with a larger chainring. A bit of creative assembly gave me better gearing, tho it was prone to the chain falling off - but still a definate improvement...

Also added were various accessories, a better seat, and some decent brake pads. Still a lot of room for improvement, however. So before I came over this time, i spent a bit of time shopping on ebay, putting together a box of bits and a grand plan. The result being -

the Love Bike Type-R...

The drivetrain is now 100% mountain bike.

Secondhand 3-chainring Shimano Exage cranks up front. The bottom of the barrel rear derailleur has been replaced with a new Shimano Alivio unit.

An SRAM X5 front derailleur was "creatively modified" to fit - it was designed to fit a 31.8mm tube, but the Love Bike has a 38mm seat tube. Surgery was successful and despite sitting further back that ideal, it is working well.

A neat trick I discovered was to take out the bottom bracket and reverse the axle - its asymmetric, with one side sticking out further than the other. This allowed me to get the chainrings in closer to the frame, much improving the chainline alignment and eliminating the problem of the chain falling off.

Finally, a pair of Shimano RevoShift grip shifters do the job of gear selection.

The overall result is great fun to ride, with good high gearing on the flat, and enough low end gearing that I could ride up a vertical wall. :) Still a few tweaks that could be done, but its a different machine to what it was, and I'll be venturing out into the mountains on it at the first available opportunity. In the meantime, I'll just put the seat way back, turn the bass up and and cruise the main street of Chichibu in style :D

Last week

2006-10-02T08:00:00.000+09:00

I moved all my stuff out and said goodbye to the warehouse space ive been living in for the last year and a half. A few people deserve big thanks for helping me - Patchie, Ian, Saskia and Juz in particular. Mat and Georgia, for making some space for me to store some furniture in, and being cool housemates. Lynn and Selina for helping me unload and store at the other end. Which was under the house they and Patchie all live in...

I did have a going away party though, which was also an opportunity for Robert to show us his new Monodeck, and play us some of the new music he's been working on. (which I enjoyed a lot!) Alan also kept us entertained with music, and despite the low-key nature of the party, some good milege was put on the dancing shoes :)

as usual, most photos taken before people started to show up. It was a lovely night - people rolling up all evening, allowing me time to chat to pretty much everyone as they came in. Thanks everyone for coming to share the space, and my excitement about heading off to Japan again!

The Voice of Authority

2006-10-01T08:21:00.000+09:00

Here is a sound recording i made last night when some kind of announcement was made over the town's PA system. Think speakers on power poles, dotted around the place. It sounds sinister (and i left in the mic rumble deliberately as i thought it enhanced the effect) - though i imagine its just announcing that theres going to be some roadwork or something else totally mundane. Anyone who speaks better Nihongo than I want to translate?

Stone Cold Kitty

2006-09-30T21:57:00.000+09:00

Yep. It's Hello Kitty. In pink marble.

The last two days have been very different days. Friday, my first full day here, was a bit of a strange one. The first time i came to Chichibu, everthing was new, different, and amazing. Even after 3 months, I just kept getting a kick out of small things. This time around, my first day here seemed to have a bit of a cloud over it. To some extent, it felt like i'd never left. But it (or I) just didn't seem to have the shine it had last time. I spent the day cleaning up the caravan, and going out and stocking up on essential supplies. A bit of flute practice seemed to help a bit, and I think I was still pretty tired.

Today - Saturday - the cloud lifted, and I feel like I'm properly awake and seeing things again. Did some work on the love bike (blog entry on that coming soon), some more flute practice, and then into Tokyo with Lachlan on the train for a Saturday arvo lesson.

Kakizakai got me to change my embouchure a fair bit - so its time to undo some bad habits that have set in. I played Daha from memory, and it didnt come out too bad. Not great, but not terrible either. It was fantastic having the lesson though - i can really feel my enthusiasm kicking into overdrive again. :)

We got a lift home with Kaki, bit not before Lachlan and I hit the big computer store - he got a cheap secondhand iRiver, and I got a cheap secondhand second monitor for my laptop - something i'll need so I can work properly. I also paid a visit to the local Outdoor World, and bought a super-cool little gas stove and titanium pot set to take camping. (after deciding not to lug the Trangia over here this time) We all had a fun and relaxed conversation in the car on the way back - an enjoyable ride.

Another thing which lifted me today was Patchie getting Skype to work. So nice to hear her voice from over here. A short sunset bikeride, home for some dinner and a bit more flute practice and I'm feeling just wonderful. :)

Dreaming in Japanese...

2006-09-29T00:10:00.000+09:00

A week ago I had a dream in Japanese. I dont remember much about it, other than that the people in it were speaking Japanese, and so was I. So it seems my brain has been waking up and reconnecting all the bits from last time, in preparation for being here now. Which I am. Here. In Japan. Now.

:D

Now, please excuse the short entry, as im about to crash!

Oyasumi nasai!

Moving On

2006-08-09T13:19:00.000+09:00

Due to unforseen circumstances (the installation of a giant rumbing industrial airconditioning unit directly below me), I'm moving out of my space before I go to Japan. All my stuff will be stored while I'm away, which will save me quite a bit in rent, and in the new year I'll begin to look for a new place to live.

While I've had a fantastic time living here in this wonderful space, It definately seems like the right time to be moving on. One possible plan sees me moving up to the Blue Mountains - something thats been on my mind for a while now. Those of you that know me well know that I'm most at home in places like that, having lived happily in the Adelaide hills for many years before moving to Sydney. If this happens, I imagine Splitting my time between living in the mountains and living with Patchie in the city.

But in the mean time, I have just on seven weeks to slowly pack up my kit, move it into storage, and try not to get too excited about going BACK TO JAPAN!! :D

In The Future...

2006-07-13T08:30:00.000+09:00

-We Will Drive Cars That Can Fly
-We Will Live In Giant Geodesic Domes
-We Will Have 50 Megabit Per Second Internet Connections Wired To Our Caravans

Well, the first one is a way off yet. But the last two - Welcome to Japan.

In Australia, the fastest connection theoretically available is around 20 Mbit/Sec, but you need to be camped next door to the telephone exchange to get it. so the reality is usually somewhat less. And its only available on a small percentage of exchanges. In my space here in Sysdney, I'm lucky enough to be connected to one of those special exchanges, and as a result i get a blisteringly fast 8Mbit/sec. by contrast, the average houshold broadband connection is 512k/sec - one sixteenth of what I get here.

Kakizakai-sensei has generously found out about getting the internet plumbed into my caravan in Chichibu. The result: by the time I arrive, the giant manga-style organic tangle of fibre-optic cables should have sprouted out of the ground and enveloped the van, reality will be a relative point of view, and the van will exist half in this world, and half floating in the twinkling data-sphere of the greater internet, running at speeds a hundred times what a regular net connection here in Australia gives you.

It boggles the mind - this is not a datacentre in the heart of tokyo. This is a caravan, on the edge of a small town in the mountains of Japan.

Casts our national network here in Aus into pretty sad light, doesn't it...

Another Three Months...

2006-07-05T10:12:00.000+09:00

Well, its been six months or so since i got back. I know i promised to keep blogging, and tell some of the stories that didnt get blogged - especially the stories of my wonderful two week cycle tour. But you know what its like. Once back in Australia, my life here took hold of me again and it just never happened.

*But*

Come the 28th of September, 2006, I'm off to do it all again! Another 3 Months in Japan. :)

This time will be a little different, however, as I dont have three months of leave from work up my sleeve. This time, i'm going to have to continue to work while I'm there. Ill be working 4 days a week, doing exactly what I do here, just from over there. If all goes to plan, my caravan will have broadband by the time I arrive, and it will be mostly business as usual. I'll resume my shakuhachi studies with Kakizakai-sensei, and my explorations of the odd stuff to be found at the local supermarket.

I have vowed, however, *never* to touch another mystery triangle as long as I live, tho I do plan on writing a short guide to convenience store cuisine in a future blog entry.

So the next while will be spent getting my work processes well sorted for the time away, doing flute practice, and figuring out what to (or not to) take :)

Ive saved the best news till last however - my partner Rachel is going to come and spend two weeks with me there in early December!! :D I'm pretty over the moon about this. I'll take some holidays durning this time, and we will see the Yomatsuri (Night Festival) in Chichibu, and then take off for a week, railpasses in hand.

Lots of other folks may well be passing thru too, and im looking forward to seeing all of them. My Caravan is Your Caravan...

See you all soon!

3 Months is a Short/Long/Indeterminate Time

2005-12-07T14:54:00.000+09:00

The last week has gone past quickly, despite being jam packed. On the weekend, there was the chichibu night festival, which I am still digesting. Since then has been a revisit to Temple 32, a trip into Tokyo to see Kabuki, a last spin on the Love Bike, and my last two shakuhachi lessons with Kakizakai-sensei. The last one was squeezed in at 9am this morning, before being dropped at the station to catch a train to catch a train to catch a plane.

So, now I am sitting in an internet cafe in the airport, waiting for my flight. Somehow, by smiling a lot, I managed to get 27kg of baggage checked in, and then, with even more smiling, about 20kg of hand luggage. Thanks to three very lovely China Airlines check in staff, who seemed to like me a lot, and so pretended that they didnt try and pick up my hand luggage. VERY very lucky.

So goes the journey home. So far, excellent. I plan to avoid watching silly movies on a teeny screen too close to my eyes, and instead play games on a teeny screen - I bought Nick a Playstation Portable and some games which it is my duty to test to make sure it works before giving it to him. I also have my laptop, and will begin the task of organising and weeding my photographs, of which there are many. Show and Tell when I am back and settled.

I will continue to update this blog with the many stories that I havent yet got around to telling - the rest of my big trip, and the chichibu festival in paticular will take a couple of entries each to tell.

So 3 months in Japan should provide me with enough stories and pictures to cover the time from now until the next 3 months in Japan, hopefully next year...

its been a h00t!

:)

Yattai!

2005-12-03T00:54:00.000+09:00

Very quick entry, before I go to bed. Tomorrow morning, I get to pull one of these, thanks to some very wonderful friends!

in the meantime, heres a link to a short movie I made today. Its 15 Meg, so dont download it if you dont have broadband.

Tadaima!

2005-12-02T09:43:00.000+09:00

means "just now"

I followed the sound of Taiko drums back from the coin-laundry, to discover them wheeling one of the festival floats out of its house!

I must have looked serious while jumping around taking photos, becase they gave me what appears to be the equivalent of a press pass - giving me permission to get right up close to the float, and in the action to take pics...

To turn them, they put a huge jack underneath, and magic feet appear from the float, and turn the jack handle till the float is almost off the ground, then all the folks pulling the ropes pull it around till it is pointing where they want it to go. Everyone is coordinated by the taiko drums - different rythms mean different manoevers.

Bump of Chicken

2005-12-01T23:21:00.000+09:00

I'm a stranger in a strange land, for sure.

Hee hee. Laughed a *lot* when I saw this. Still laughing, in fact. :)

I wonder what other people's tourist photos look like. Not like mine, I suspect.

this was the result of walking between Shibuya and Harajuku.

but I can take normal pictures too...

Note the Duck Storage shop on the right in Harajuku. Tokyo is very animal friendly. You can buy your duck at Ducky Duck in Shibuya, and store it at Store My Ducks in Harajuku. And don't forget your chicken bumps...

apologies for any weird formatting - it seems that both the latest release of Firefox, and Opera have problems with blogspot.com, and ive banished IE from my system. Perhaps a little prematurely, it appears.

Magic bits of Bamboo

2005-11-29T10:16:00.000+09:00

"So," asked the little boy's mother "how much did you get for the cow?"

"Well," the little boy was very excited. "I met a man on the way to the market, and I traded him the cow for these magic bits of bamboo!"

Whats to say, really :)

I suppose I could tell you that the smaller flute is my normal flute, and is a 1.8 shaku (a shaku is an old japanese unit of measurement similar to a foot) long, and its base note is D above middle C. The new, long flute is a 2.4 shaku, and is A below middle C.

While travelling around on my 2-week tour - which I havent properly blogged yet - I made my way high up into the mountains of Nagano, and stayed with a flutemaker called Tom Deaver. I have been looking for a long flute for a while, and we talked flutes, played music together, and I tried a bunch of his works-in-progress. He asked me what my budget was, and I told him. He responded fairly bluntly that he would rather considerably more. We left it at that, and had a really good evening.

In the morning, as I was about to hop on my bike for what turned out to be one of the most wonderful day's rides of my trip - down the mountains, through stunning scenery - he said he would keep working on the flutes (he wasnt happy with the balance) and send them to Kakizakai when he was done, for me to try.

Many weeks went past in a pretty amazing way, I came back to Chichibu, studied more, travelled again, tried lots of flutes from different makers. While out on my week long trip with Andrew and Nobuko, an email from Kaikizakai arrives, telling me that Tom has visited, and left a flute for me to try...

So, as soon as I'm back, I'm around at Kakizakai's, and here is this flute - one that I tried in an unfinished state while at Toms. At the time, I really liked the sound, but found the hole positions uncomfortable. But having played a bunch of long flutes since then, and changed the style of my hand positions, it was now perfectly comfortable, and sounded even better. Bronwyn can get a huge sound out of it - which is fantastic, as it gives me something to aim for, and also means that I cant blame the instrument if I'm having a bad day :)

I ask what price Tom wanted, knowing already that I would pay whatever he asked, and that it would be a lot more than I could probably afford, and he names the exact amount that I told Tom was my budget originally.

So I feel extremely lucky to have both an exceptional instrument, and a connection with its maker. This kind of personal connection and relationship with the people that make the things I use, the clothes I wear, the music I listen to - is becoming more and more important to me, and it is, I think, by far the most rewarding and wonderful way to do things...

Warning: This Box of Plastic may contain traces of Chocolate!

2005-11-25T19:50:00.000+09:00

Things tend towards being overpackaged in Japan. I think possibly as a result of the Japanese axiom : Clean=Beautiful. This is literal. The word for Beautiful, Pretty, Nice is Kirei. This is also the word for Clean.

If you buy something - say, some chocolate - you get: Chocolate pieces, individually wrapped in plastic, inside a box, which is wrapped in plastic. This is then put into another plastic bag, unless you resist mightily. You are a space alien if this doesnt make complete and obvious sense.

This is a Gross Generalisation, which I wouldnt normally make, except that the sheer amount of packaging I am being bombarded with is getting me down just a little.

Maybe I just need a haircut...

Panoramic fun and games

2005-11-24T18:21:00.000+09:00

No particular topic for today, except that while over here, ive been having fun making panoramas. A lot of things just don't fit into the viewfinder of a camera, so stitching multiple shots together can sometimes give a better sense of size and scale. And its also just a lot of fun! Cant afford a bug-eye 15mm lens? No worries. take a series of shots and then use something like Autostitch to simulate one...

At the top is the shinkansen platform at Nagoya station. Just above is the first of the big bridges I rode my bike across while traversing the inland sea (Full story of that in a future entry). Below is another of these mammoth bridges.

Ive used panoramas in previous entries - koto-in, the alpine route, etc. Some panoramas are obvious, but others can be quite subtle. Here is a shot of my favourite buddha-in-a-cave on top of a mountain. It is a composite of just two shots, and some clever photoshop clone-tool work to fill in the black gap at the edge. Normally, I'd just crop, but in this case it would have destroyed the composition.

Here is an interesting one. This is a stitch of six separate photos of a mural in a subway in Takamatsu. The tricky thing about this one, is that when you take a series of shots for a panorama, you usually stand in one place and just rotate while taking shots. In this case, however, that wasnt possible, since the mural was along one wall of a subway tunnel. I also wanted to preserve the mural without too much distortion, so i just walked along the length of it, taking shots of the panels. Autostitch was still able to handle this - in theory, this is no different from a bunch of shots taken from a single virtual point a long way away, with a telephoto lens.

The one below, taken in Shirakawago, is unusual in that it isnt just a horizontally linear series of photos. its a whole bunch of shots, 14, in fact, in two strips of 7, one catching the top of the island and the sky, the other the bottom and the river. Looks like something out of Riven or Myst...

I could go on, but I really ought to do some flute practice. So just one last panorama. :)

Temple #32

2005-11-23T19:59:00.000+09:00

Chichibu is in a river valley, surrounded by impressive mountains. Very much like the Blue mountains, except the people live in the valley, not on the tops. The tops are too pointy, and as Ive said before, the forest tends to eat anything that stands still. There are 34 temples dedicated to Kannon (Quan Yin in Chinese), the god/ess of compassion, dotted in and around Chichibu, and Number 32 is one of the most beautiful. This is (IMHO) directly related to it being one of the most remote and hard to get to.

So it was on the bike, in search of. I'd visited once before with Megumi and some of the shakuhachi crew (photo at right), so I knew where it was. Kind of. First attempt saw me ride off somewhere completely different.

A lovely ride, but no temple.

Another day, another attempt - but this time, I had a map. The aim was to be up there mid afternoon, and stay for sunset.

The Love Bike has undergone extensive modification during my time here, from innocent little commuter cycle, to hardcore child-eating monster. Note the chunky downhill mountain bike cranks, sporting a very creative chainring setup. The big ring is in the middle position, but using the original middle chainring (and some extra washers) as a spacer to try and achieve the correct offset. Vaaaast improvement. longer cranks now mean much more cranking power, and the bigger chainring means a serious top speed boost. A new seat, and decent brakes also help. Not shown in this photo are the in-wheel coloured light effect units it now sports.

All this adds up to the bike being much more fun to ride, especially in the mountains. So, off to Temple #32, Hōshō-ji. It was on the other side of a pretty serious ridge, and the new bike setup really proved itself on the climb. The downhill run on the other side was a hoot! I did take note as I whizzed down, that the amount of fun I was having would be directly proportional to the amount of effort required to return home...

So, I duly arrived at Hōshō-ji, chained up the bike where it wouldnt bite passers by, and headed up.

The temple itself is on the side of a mountain, in a number of parts. The main hall is not far up from the entrance. From there you follow the gulley up to a smaller temple, tucked partly into a rock overhang. The wood on the floor and beams was polished smooth from years of use. Very beautiful, secluded and peaceful.

On the path just underneath this building was the first of my three favourite statues in Japan.

From here, the path winds up a gulley, through dense forest - it felt very much like some walks in the Blue Mountains. It goes up a long way, and eventually you pop out onto a large rocky outcrop, right up on top of the mountain, with spectacular panoramic views of densely forested mountains and valleys, with bits of town visible off in the distance.

The path forks here, and I took the upward fork first. This path leads to a near vertical cliff face, with stone footholds chiselled in, and a chain dangling down from somewhere above.

On top, you find youself in the company of a life size bronze buddha, tucked into a tiny cave right on the very top of the mountain. It looks like its been there for a long time. Since before helicopters and airlifting anyway. Gives one food for thought. This is the second of my three favourite statues.We had lunch together on top of the mountain, and I played a bit of shakuhachi. No complaints from my lunch partner, so I guess it wasn't too bad. He seemed to be into collecting beads, mobile phone danglies and other interesting bits and pieces, so I made a teeny paper crane from the foil wrapping of a biscuit I had with me, and attached it to the bundle.

The only other person I met since leaving the main temple down below was a Japanese pilgrim, doing his circuit of the 34 temples (this is usually done over a period of weeks, in stages). He was rather surprised to find me sitting up on top having lunch with my friend, but didnt seem to mind.

Down the chain, and back to the junction. It was getting pretty close to sunset by the time I got to where I was going, which was the prow of section of cliff that jutted right out over the valley. I played some more shakuhachi, a piece called San-ya (Three Valleys), which seemed appropriate, and which echoed nicely off down the valley.

I wasnt entirely alone though - I was in the company of the third of my favourite statues, some images of which I managed to capture, right on sunset...

More Autumn

2005-11-19T21:00:00.000+09:00

Remember this shot from the Kyoto entry a while back? Slightly more colourful this time around. I wish i could go back again in about 2 weeks or so. And then again in winter... and spring...

Last entry saw us staying at Watanabe Onsen in Toyohashi.

The finest onsen west of Fuji, Watanabe Onsen's cooked breakfasts were very special times - though on one occasion, I decided to eat leftover handrolled sushi from the night before - something Nobuko's mum, Hamako, found a bit strange, but I had no problem dealing with :)

Evenings at the Onsen were even better - dinner, then waiting for the bathtub to sing its "I'm ready, and my temerature has stabilised at 42 degrees" song, a wonderful soak in the healthy, lifegiving water, followed by a relaxing massage in the Massage-O-Matic Chair (which put anything I've seen in Australia to shame, including many human masseurs).

Watanabe Onsen's heating needs are taken care of by a Mark IV Ion Plasmacluster, whose radiant blue glow we all bathed happily in.

One of my missions while in Japan was to obtain a pair of kimono for two young friends, and Hamako proved to be an extremely willing and helpful resource - taking us all to the local department store, and getting the kimono department jumping to assist us. It was decided that yukatta (summer kimono) would be the go, and after examining every suitable sized yukatta in the store, two were purchased, along with simple obi (waist belts). Above and beyond the call of duty, Hamako then proceeded to tailor the kimono to the exact measurements provided, and turned the rather plain obi into something special, by tying appropriate bows and knots, and stitching them so they wouldnt come undone. I have complete instructional video footage of how to dress, and tie the obi properly. I wont provide photos, as the friends in question may just happen to read this, and I wouldnt want to spoil the surprise.

Instead, heres a picture of a gorgeous Autumn kimono we saw on the next part of our voyage, which saw me return to Kyoto.

We had some kind of deal that enabled us to stay in a rather nice hotel in Kyoto for very little money. The only catch was that Nobuko had to pretend to be her sister, which was fine, but Andrew doesnt look terribly much like a Japanese husband, and I look even less like Japanese Granddad. So we waited outside while she checked in.

We visited a kimono museum, which was also a studio where they dyed and hand-painted kimono silk. Watching the painters paint extraordinarily beautiful and delicate designs onto hand dyed silk, with rock steady hands and extraordinary accuracy was really special.

From there, we checked out the Nishijin Textile Centre, where we got to see people weaving silk on 150 year old Jaquard looms, and met a very friendly fellow, whose business is painting the family crests onto kimonos.

We chatted to him for ages, and he ended up doing designs for us on bits of scrap silk. He uses incredibly fine brushes, scarcely more than a hair, and has the steadiest hands ive ever seen. As he pointed out, when painting a crest onto someones mega-yen hand made kimono, you only get one chance, and it has to be perfect. He painted Andrew a very cool butterfly design, and I got him to paint my little cloud logo.

Next day, we headed straight for Koto-in. The grounds of Daitokuji were extremely quiet - much more than when I was there last time - a real bonus. Koto-in was cemented as my favourite place in Japan. The wonderful trees and beautiful buildings I've already shown plenty of, but here are a few of the other reasons...

Ahh ok, I couldnt resist just a few more trees and buldings...

Kyoto was a bit of a gift shopping bonanza this time, with Nobuko and I proving to be dangerous company for each other, while Andrew observed with amusement. Lacquered bowls, a hand-felted bag, wooden things, ceramics, fabric, books, magazines. The familiar cry of "Argh! How am I going to get all this home!"

After Kyoto, it was back to Toyohashi for the night, and then A&N wanted to show me a little of Nagoya, where they lived and worked before coming back to Australia. I really liked the feel of Nagoya, possibly because I was in good company with local knowledge, but even so, it seemed to be a nice city.

We found a wonderful bookshop, called Mountain-Route, which appears to be part of a small chain of maybe half a dozen shops in Japan. It was a wonderful place though - full of life and the effort of the staff (and patrons) to make it something more than your average bookshop. the place was laid out beautifully, with nooks to sit and read (there was even a teeny room under the stairs, no more than a metre an a bit high, complete with bookshelves and cushions. Their stock seemed very carefully selected, by people with very interesting taste, and consisted mostly of wonderful kids books, art books, poetry, and art-picture-story books for kids and adults. A lot of very accessable but incredibly deep and moving works. I bought a few books that seemed to be perfect for various people, but really didnt want to leave the shop. They had a 'tree' with flat perspex branch/shelves, and when you bought a book, you got to write something on a coloured leaf and add it to the tree. the perspex shelves meant the colours of the leaves were visible, and you could also read what people had written (tho mostly in Japanese, of course)

King Kong in a baseball cap above wasnt part of anything - just a weird bit of public sculpture, or obscure advertising maybe. Not uncommon in Japan. King Kong, I mean. Or obscure advertising for that matter... Take the Zen Mall in Harajuku (Tokyo) for instance...

After wandering around Nagoya a bit, it was dinner time, and Andrew had major plans for visiting a strange Nagoya chicken-wing chain, run by some crazy guy who in Australia would be on telly advertising two dollar shops.

The wings were seriously addicive however. Some of A&N's friends from Nagoya came along, but I had to leave, despite very much wanting to stay. The shinkansen waits for noone. I was getting Nobuko to write down a basic translation of the storyline of one of the books I had bought however, and this meant a last minute dash for the train. I literally stepped onto it, and the door closed behind me, and off back to Tokyo it was.

Here is a photo of Fuji-san I took on the way over, just because Fuji is so nice.

Japan continues to show me its best side. Everyone assures me its rare to see Fuji, but every time I've gone past, the view has been great. Even driving into Tokyo today with the crew, we saw Fuji, poking up to the west. It really is an impressive mountain. Much much larger than anything else around, and it's shape is beautiful - no wonder its so revered, and features large in the minds and arts of the Japanese.

And one last detail, just to remind you... Autumn...

Autumn

2005-11-16T23:39:00.000+09:00

My wayward laptop has finally returned. Much has happened since the last entry, which was about Kyoto. Since then, Ive come back to Chichibu, studied, explored more of the surrounds, been in and out of Tokyo, and most recently, been travelling for a week with my wonderful friends Andrew and Nobuko. Appropriately, this has seen me return to Kyoto again, and I was able to revisit some of my favourite places from the first visit.

This time however, it was Autumn...

I really can't describe how sublimely beautiful Japan is in Autumn. Japanese poets have been trying for centuries, but still can't get even close. The intensity of the colours, the subtlety of the gradients, the superb shapes of the trees, the luminous translucency of the leaves, the freshness of the air...

In Kyoto, Koto-in, a subtemple of Daitoku-ji that I talked about in my last entry, was even more superb this time. I can only imagine what it must have been like to live there, watching the seasons change day by day.

Travelling with Andrew and Nobuko in Japan was pretty special - its been something Andrew and I have been wanting to do for a very, very long time.

We met up in Nagoya railway station, and immediately headed out on a train to Takayama, in the north of central Honshu. The train took us through mountains in the grip of Autumn, and the scenery was spectacular.

In what was to develop as a theme for our travels, we had about 2 minutes in Takayama to find and board a bus that would take us onward to Shirakawago, a village that is world heritage listed, for its wealth of traditional thatched roof gassho-zukuri farmhouses. The name literally means 'hands in prayer'. They are built entirely with wood, rope and straw and are quite beautiful. We stayed ryokan-style in one, which included delicious cooked dinner and breakfast.

In the mornings, when the sun hits the thatched rooves, large clouds of steam are generated, producing a quite spectacular sight - visible in the photographs.

It was also here that I was introduced to mitarashii dango, a kind of mochi (pounded cooked rice) that come as balls on skewers, grilled, and dipped in a special soy based sauce. Im going to try and make them when I get back home, so you may get to taste them if you are lucky (or unlucky, depending on my measure of success). Our Mochi-Man had the technique and the secret sauce perfected, and we visited him three times during the morning for more. Nobuko tried to talk the secret sauce recipe out of him, with some, but not complete success.

From Shirakawago, we went further north to stay in an onsen town, called Unazuki Onsen. Our hotel had both indoor and outdoor onsen, which we duly enjoyed, tho the outdoor onsen was less natural than I imagined - more like a large shallow heated pool, surrounded by rocks cemented into place, and 'natural' hot spring water piped from somewhere down below.

We decided to take the Tateyama-Kuroba alpine-route, to its high point at Morodo, which involved a train, then a bus ride way up into the Japan Alps. I was very happy to see bits of snow appear by the side of the road, and by the time we got to Morodo, the snow was knee deep.

While the tourists assembled on the roof deck for their group photos, we wandered off into the wilderness for a bit of an explore.

Snowballs were thrown, and a snowman, which I called Yukihito (literally 'snow-person') was constructed, mostly by Nobuko, who was the only one of us with gloves.

In this photo, he is grumpy about not having a bottom bit. Actually, he was a bit like a buddha statue, in that his expression was somehow completely different depending on what angle you looked at him from. Joyous, grumpy, indifferent...

From there, we headed back to Toyohashi, to Nobuko's parents place. They really are lovely people. When I was best man at Andrew and Nobuko's wedding, Nobuko's folks seemed to take a real shine to me, and her dad, Yasuhiro, was very emphatic in inviting me to come and visit in Japan. Which, finally, I managed to do.

I'll post this entry now, and continue from here tomorrow. Just in case you had forgotten, its Autumn here...

Kyoto is a Nice Place

2005-10-09T20:44:00.000+09:00

I almost finished an entry about my further adventures in Takamatsu, then clicked the 'Back' button on the browser and that was that. no more entry :(

I'll retype that one later. The short of it was that I ended up using the magic rail pass to get to Kyoto, arriving on Saturday afternoon. On the train I figured out a hostel that sounded good - and has indeed turned out to be rather lovely, not to mention cheap! Its called "Tour Club" and at 2300 yen a night (dorm accom) is worth every teeny little aluminium 1 yen coin.

Shower was bliss after two nights camping, and a lot of cycling around. Ate big, slept like a log and woke up ready to check out Kyoto.

I headed out north along the Kamo River aiming to wander up to a couple of Rinzai zen temples northwest of the city, but in no rush. it was only 8am, so nothing much was open, and the city was relatively quiet. Riverside is wonderful - a whole little scene of its own - by day fishermen gather to fish and chat - under one bridge they literally have a kind of cafe set up - chairs and tables theyve brought along, and an amazing collection of plants and bonsai! they just stay there at night - noone touches them.

I headed through the Imperial Palace gardens, which were lovely, and filled with people playing sports or games or just wandering. I watched a friendly but serious baseball game, which was fun. Lots of laughing and yelling "Play Baaa". Saw the best petanque player ive ever seen - beware the One Armed Man - he's deadly accurate with a cannonball.

My incredible good luck continues, and I wandered into Koto-in completely at random. Well, not totally - the surrounding bamboo forest looked good from the outside - But I certainly wasnt specifically looking for it. It turned out to be the most beautiful, serene and inspiring place ive yet been to in Japan. Its a 'subsidiary temple' of Daitoku-ji which is a large Rinzai Zen temple. I wandered in and felt immediately comfortable and open. I wandered around, but eventually returned to the wide porch, clearly a spot designed for sitting and contemplating the garden. The garden itself, at least the view from the sitting spot, is a masterpiece. Ive never seen anything like it. Designed by a famous tea-master who's name eludes me, sitting looking at it induces a very deep serenity. I just sat for about an hour and a half. When time came to move on, my legs had completely gone to sleep and I had to massage them before I could actually stand. Photos of it fail miserably to do it justice, so I havent included any of the 'sitting spot'. You'll have to make do with my description and the other photos of the temple grounds.
In fact this one will have to be communicated in person when I get back home. E-communication just isn't up to the job. :)

After Koto-in, I visited Daitoku-ji proper - which, to be honest wasnt worth the admission fee, especially after Koto-in, which was free. The one thing it did have that was great was squeaky floorboards. Almost musically so. It must be deliberate. I have a recording which I'll get up on the web some time. It was interesting sitting and listening to how people walked and interacted with it. Some people were completely oblivious. Clomped around with their heads full of other things. Others, perhaps more open to their immediate environment, trod lightly and with curiosity. Others walked as if they were playing a musical instrument :)

Next, I rode on to Ryoan-ji, another Rinzai temple with a very famous rock garden.

The grounds of which were also very beautiful. Japanese maples have to be one of the most beautiful trees. Soft layers of leaves that seem to have their own internal glow when backlit by the sun.

I got to hear zen nuns singing and playing bells at another temple as I wound my way through the back streets towards the city centre again. There really is a temple garden or shrine on every street in Kyoto.

Some gift shopping amongst thronging but happy crowds, then back along the river - At night, the scene is mostly young people strolling and spending time with friends and loved ones, watching the city lights refected.

Thats Kyoto so far...

I do however continue to get a lot of amusement out of the fact that the Japanese, who love rules and regiment, also love nothing more to ignore the same when it suits...

Camped under an orange tree...

2005-10-07T09:26:00.000+09:00

In Takamatsu again today. Tried to ride to the top of a nearby mountain last night, but it has a tollroad leadin up to the top, and the gatekeeper said emphatically NO BIKES. :( So I found a nearby orange grove and camped under an orange tree. :)

Saw the most gorgeous little buddhist temple at dawn this morning. The gatehouse especally had the most extraordinary attention to detail, and patina of age and use.

Thunderstorms forecast this arvo, so will find a spot in a hostel here tonight. Hopefully tomorrow down the coast to a place called Naruto, where the narrow Naruto Straits have famously large tidal whirlpools. This afternoon, off to see Ritsurin Park.

Ben-san de Takamatsu ni ikimashita...

2005-10-06T16:24:00.000+09:00

but unfortunately, Ben-san no jitensha de Okayama ni ikimashita!

Warning: putting your luggage and yourself in different train carriages is a very bad idea. Seems like common sense, doesnt it.

Lucky for me I was blessed on Miyajima the other day.

After an utterly incredible 2 day bike ride from Onomichi, on 'mainland' Honshu, to Imabari on Shikoku, via a chain of bridges and islands across the inland sea - an experience that was absolutely unforgettable, and will get a blog entry of its own, once I get the photos off the digital camera, and some decent net time - I ended up taking the train to Takamatsu this morning.

Train platforms in Japan have a series of numbered signs along their length to indicate the carriage numbers of the train. My seat was in Carriage 1. So I line up under the number 1, and board the train with my bike. I stow the bike in the luggage spot of the carriage, and try to find my seat. 6D. hmm... this carriage doesnt appear to have a seat 6D. Aha! it appears this train, for some unfathomable reason, has the carriages numbered in opposite order to the platform markings. I appear to be in carriage 8. We are already underway, and there's no way I'm going to carry the bike through 8 carriages of people. So I leave it in "carriage 8" and go find my seat in carriage 1.

A scenic but otherwise uneventful trip. We stop at a number of stations. Then, about 2 stops short of Takamitsu, we stop. For quite a while. I get an uneasy feeling...

I make it to carriage 4, to see the back of carriage 5 just starting to pull away... I look at the guard who was waving off the half of the train containing my bike, tent, sleeping bag, trangia and thermarest. Its immediately obvious, with no words necessary, what the story is. "Doko?" I say... "Okayama" he responds sympathetically. Okayama. The place that just won't leave me alone. Site of my first day blues trying to find Metho for the Trangia, and lugging the bike in and out of the train station repeatedly.

Not much I can do now :) So back to my seat, to rehearse in my head the Japanese I would need to muster to explain the situation to the station staff in Takamatsu...

With the aid of clever diagrams, and the slightly off-white belt in Japanese awarded me by Michiko-sensei, I manage to communicate the situation. The heroic station master springs into action. He makes the call to Okayama. Asks me what the bike looked like. Luckily, I took a photo of it, folded up ready to go, on the platform in Imabari. I show him. He gets off the phone, points to some seats and tells me "please to wait". I wait. 15 minutes later, he waves at me, and it appears that the bike has made it safely to Okayama, and is in the hands of the station staff. :)

He then points to a train sitting on the closest platform. "That train, Okayama." The gratitude I feel is tangible. "Domo arigato gozaimasu!" I reply as I dash for the train.

It seems the blessing from Miyajima appears to have worked.

A wonderful train ride on an old train with lovely curved glass windows, across an incredible bridge - or series of bridges joined together end to end - and 40 mins later I am in Okayama. Again. Lost and Found. The bike! w00t! but the torn sidewall from the earlier island hopping has blown out. Puncture, and a dead tyre. Well - my plan was to find a new tyre in Takamatsu anyway, so I ask at Information if there is a nearby bike shop. Near station's west entrance, Im told. This means carrying the dead bike up and down flights of stairs and taking the station underpass. Okayamagoe... (shakuhachi in-joke) But I find the bike shop. no 20 inch tyres. "Any other nearby bike shops?" I manage in Japanese. The bike shop guy tells me maybe at the giant shopping mall down the street a ways. So off I go. 3 doors down is another bike shop that the guy somehow has never seen. they dont sell parts tho. even spare tyres. another 2 doors down, there is a small shop that appears to be, and in fact is, the nearest thing i've found to a bicycle service station. The first bike shop guy must be blind. 2000 yen and 15 minutes later, I have a new tyre and tube, expertly fitted, brakes adjusted and chain lubed ready to go, Sir! Waved at the surprised first bikeshop guy on my way back past :)

I'm really starting to wonder about that blessing. That priest was *good*.

So back on a train to Takamitsu, to pick up where I left off. 3 hours down, but the bike all fixed, and a good story to tell. Im happy with the exchange. Takamatsu felt great from the start. (Still does) I ride the wrong way out of the station - or at least I think I do - so i come back. only to run into a second hand market, and the first thing i find on the table is a near new bike bag! for 500 yen! cant believe my luck. Ive been trying to find one of these things *new* for days. Ive been using a flimsy scooter-cover for the last while, when station staff get thingy about the bike not being in a bike bag. dodgy, and now full of holes, but its got me by. But now I have a funky bike bag!

What did that priest *do*??!

tee hee. but really - its all in the mind - allow yourself to feel the flow of things and go with it, and disaster is revealed to be perfection. hard to explain, but it works. And in all this, the secret gem - I got to see a smiling stationman's unseen flag flourish.

Shika no Tone

2005-10-04T10:03:00.000+09:00

Ive been in Hiroshima since Sunday, and today will head down the coast along the inland sea. But I've packed a lot into the last few days...

Friday night I got to see the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra play in Tokyo - when i turned up on Marty's (fellow student of Kakizakai-sensei) doorstep in tokyo friday afternoon, he said "want to go see some music? ive got some free tickets..." :)

Saturday morning I caught the Skinkansen to a place called Okayama - about a 3 1/2 hour trip west. The plan was to check out Okayama, then ride across the Kibi plain - camp that night on the plain, then catch a train back to Okayama the next day, and the skinkansen on to Hiroshima to see a shakuhachi concert that Bronwyn was performing in.

I got into Okayama at about 2pm, but while on the train I realised I had not obtained any metho to fuel the trangia (camping stove) - bad mistake. So I rode around Okayama trying to find metho. No luck. I found a camping store that sold Trangias, but according to the staff, they didnt sell fuel for them. This needed to be obtained from a Drug Store. This conversation took place in bad japanese, with a lot of pointing and gesticulation. So I visited a number of drug stores, but no luck. By this stage things were getting lateish, and I was pretty over it, so I decided to head out anyway and just have a cold dinner.

Definately the right move, and as soon as I was out of Okayama, I felt 110% better. Being on the Kibi plain at sunset was just wonderful - its more of a long, flat bottomed valley than what my Australian mind identifies as a plain, but japan is mostly mountains, so any piece of flat land larger than a postage stamp is considered a plain. Usually this means its covered in city, but the Kibi plain is mostly farmland. Rice paddies and a few veggie plots. It's networked with teeny bike-sized access roads though, and riddled with shrines, burial mounds, ruins of temples and other interesting sights.

It got dark before i found a camping spot however, but eventually I came to a burial mound - a large terraced artificial hill, and pitched the tent on one of the terraces, with a superb view out over the plain. It was still early, so i did a bit of shakuhachi practice (hee hee - I wonder if anyone though it was a ghost!) and went to sleep pretty soon after. Up early next morning, and caught the sunrise over the plain. I saw nesting cranes too! Didnt see the nests, but saw cranes, and they were swooping passers by (including me), so I assume they were nesting. They are really impressive. BIG. and when they swoop, they fly in silently and then when they are right on top of you, do a left-right zigzag that makes a big whooshing noise, and then fly off. Certainly caught me by surprise first time...

I caught a local train back from a place called Soja to Okayama, in time to catch the Hikari Rail-Star to Hiroshima. A very impressive train indeed - looked more like something about to launch into space. And it is indeed extremely impressive when you pass another one coming the opposite way, at a range of about half a metre, with a relative speed of about 600 km/hr! the whole train gets sucked sideways for an instant as the two pass. In all, the shinkansen feel like being in a plane that is about to land, with a small amount of turbulance.

Arrived in Hiroshima, with about an hour to find the concert venue. Found it, after a bit of riding up and down, and went in to wait for the concert. Anne Norman was the featured performer - another Australian (Japan seems to be *full* of us) who has been playing for about 30 years. Though an amateur concert, the standard was great! Anne played some solo pieces, and there were some ensemble pieces with a bunch of other local shakuhachi players. She also did a duet with Bronwyn, called Shika no Tone, which is about the calling of the deer. Afterwards I was invited along to the after-party/dinner which was a hoot! first time ive had a chance to interact with the japanese in relaxo-mode over a huge meal and plenty of beeru. When it was discovered that I had no accom sorted, I was invited back to Mende-san's house, where Bron and Anne were also staying.

Mende-san was largely responsible for organising the concert, and the hospitality shown by him and his wife was really extraordinary. Lovely people. He finds it baffling but wonderful that foreigners would spend their hard earned money and spend extened time away from loved ones, just to learn an obscure Japanese instument and be interested in Japanese culture. It moves him quite deeply, and as a result he goes way out of his way to help us. In this photo, we have, Right to left, Mende-san, Bronwyn, Anne, Keiko (Mende-san's wife), Fuji-san's wife (whose name I cant remember - terrible, since she was so lovely and I had a great conversation with her in Japlinglish), and Fuji-san.

Monday, he took us all sightseeing, to Miyajima island. Fuji-san, one of the other players in the performance had organised with the (famous) shrine on Miyajima, to have us all blessed, and for Anne and Bronwyn to be able to perform Shika no Tone at the shrine.

Quite an amazing experience. The piece was especially relevant, since Miyajima has a population of wild deer, that wander at will through the whole town/temple complex, eating people's guidebooks and both enchanting and terrifying small children (and adults!) in equal measures. The shrine itself is built on pylons out over the water, and has the famous 'floating' Torii (gate) out in the water.

After Miyajima, we were taken to visit the Peace Park and A-Bomb Dome, which was an extremely moving experience. Just standing in front of the memorial, looking through it to the A-Bomb Dome is extremely powerful, and just thinking about it again I am close to tears. The strength of feeling was quite unexpected, and I'm still digesting the experience. I think it was also magnified by the fact that our hosts all had relatives whose names were written on the registers housed inside the memorial. Fiji-san's wife told me that they were happy that the names were there.

I parted company with the group after going through the museum, deciding that I didnt want to impose on Mende-san's hospitality any further - I cant repeat enough how wonderful his generosity, especially with his time, was. After visiting the train station and checking out routes and times, I decided that I would rather spend the night in Hiroshima, so got a room at a hostel near the peace park, dumped my gear, and took the bike out for a look around town.

Peace Park, once the centre of a devastated city, is now a lovely and indeed peaceful place. At night, people wander around it, sit by the river with friends, or just play. I saw three girls practicing their dance routines in the reflective windows of the museum. People playing guitars and fishing under a bridge. Homeless and travellers alike sleep quietly and undisturbed on some of the benches.

The A-Bomb Dome at night is a quiet and beautiful place. Lit quite minimally, it radiates a kind of easy stillness that is simultaneously extremely welcoming and quietly thought provoking. Peace Park really is a wonderfully peaceful place.

The photo at the beginning of this blog entry is a moss stain on the wall of Okayama castle. Painted by nature and circumstance, and as beautiful (I think) as any Japanese landscape painting ive seen - it seems to me to be the scene of a moonrise over the forested mountains.

Time for me to head off and see the inland sea... but ill leave you with one last photo...

we apologise for the disconnection...

2005-10-01T07:47:00.000+09:00

My Laptop died. Just like that. Using it one minute, turned away, turned back... black screen. :(

Which is why the blog has been quiet of late.

Im in Tokyo at the moment, after staying at a friend's house so i could get an early start on the Grand Tour, which begins today :)

Beginning with a 9:30am Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to a place called Okayama, which is an hour this side of Hiroshima. about 4 hours on the train. I'll probably sleep most of it - had a late-ish night last night after being unexpectedly taken out to see the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra - which was a real treat... AND I got to ride the longest escalator in the world! w00t!

anyway - heres a pic of Shinjuku at night - the raw image is very large - straight from the camera. no chance to edit it to a more reasonable size - so dont click on it unless you have broadband, or time to spare :)

On ya bike...

2005-09-23T21:31:00.000+09:00

Today was an odd one. In between practice, I did get out for two lovely rides in Chichibu and the local surrounds.

The first ride took me out of Chichibu to the other side of the next town - a place called Yokoze. I turned around when the mountains started to get serious. Save that ride for another day.

Here is a farmer just beginning his rice harvest. he had this nifty little powered harvester which not only cut the stalks, but bundled and tied the rice into sheafs as well - you can see these lying on the ground next to his path.

After the field is harvested, the sheafs (sheaves?) are hung up to dry. Yokoze is a bit more rural feeling than Chichibu. Lovely to ride through - the bike gives me the freedom to explore down side roads, and venture further, without eating into my practice time.

Buko-san is the mountain behind Chichibu and Yokoze both, and I cant help but be reminded of the movie "Princess Mononoke" - which describes the struggle between the forest and its representative spirits, and iron-age Japan, that had begun to see it as little more than fuel for the blast furnaces. The spirits of course were a bit cross.

Buko-san is high-grade limestone, and is being peeled like an apple. Pretty tragic, really. I can hear blasting every now and then, as the mountain is slowly broken down and turned into bags of cement to build modern japan.

This local statue of Buddha looked like it was about to have a shave. I guess the showercap and napkin were to protect from bird poo maybe...

The reason the day was a bit iffy for me was that my practice today consisted of blowing a single note, over and over, trying to find exactly the right combination of lip tension, embouchure, breath strength and flute position to achieve the best tone colour and strongest sound. I felt a bit like I was wandering around in the dark though, and wasnt really happy with the result. I know what I'm trying to achieve - Kakizakai's sound is the benchmark, and hes given me instructions for moving in that direction... but I still dont feel like im making any progress on this front. What kept me at it, despite the frustration, was one of the books I'm reading at the moment - a translation of a piece by a famous Zen monk called Dōgen, accompanied by a commentary by a current zen roshi - was at hand, and I kept picking it up when i got frustrated with blowing Ro (the lowest note on the flute). I'd read a bit, and then (in vairous different, but unmistakeable ways) the book would effectively say:

"What are you doing reading this? Reading about zen is like reading a prescription and hoping to get better. Just PRACTICE!!"

The Love Bike

2005-09-22T11:52:00.000+09:00

"Amour..." it says on the side. How could I not fall in love?

9,900 yen brand new. Roughly $120 australian. A steal! *and* it folds up!!

Already done is a thorough de-stickering (except for the "amour..." sticker, which of course stays). It has japanese-standard-tiny cranks, and is quite low geared, so I'm looking into the option of digging up some longer cranks with a bigger front chainring from back home. Hmm... maybe some mountainbike hydraulic disc brakes... ahhh - thats right. This is a *budget* project... Sometimes the gearfreak constructor in me just won't let go.

Tokyu Hands - "For Your Creative Life"

2005-09-21T19:02:00.000+09:00

I went in to Tokyo yesterday for my first explore. I was left pretty speechless by the experience. I'm still finding it hard to describe :) You'll just all have to go see for yourselves.

One thing that is apparent is that with at least half the entire population of Australia living within a 2hr train ride of the centre, almost any obscure niche market becomes worth persuing.

On the recommendation of my friend Andrew, I visited a store called Tokyu Hands, in Shibuya. He knows me pretty well and said, fairly understatedly, that I would like it. So I found the place (after wandering around Shibuya, reeling off photos like the dazed tourist I was) and went in. About maybe 3 hours later when I came to, the cow was gone, and in my hand I had a bag of magic beans...

Tokyu Hands calls itself the Creative Life Store - and that pretty much describes what it is.

If you are involved in any creative persuit then this place Has What You Need. It even has stuff you didnt even know you needed, till they placed it on a shelf in front of you.

Needless to say, it melted my brain, and I walked out some hours later a happy man with a lighter wallet and a bag of raw dream-stuff.

Sadly, I could only maintain consciousness long enough to take photos of the "engineering supplies" section. They also have a full blown workshop, and will cut, bend, drill, dovetail any materials you buy in the store to your specifications. metal, wood, plastic. AND the most incredible range of tools ive ever seen anywhere. AND a design workshop, where they will print, cut and laser carve(!) stuff for you.

The place is 8 floors in all, divided into sub floors. These photos were just from one section of one floor. Their paper-art section was amazing too. As was the lapidary and jewellery making section, the woodwork section, the cooking supplies section, architectural modelling supplies, etc. ad infinitum.

And the english Store Guide points out that each floor has a "Counselling Centre" - presumably to help people come to terms with the experience. Or perhaps just to deal with people found wandering aimlessly through the store, with no recollection of who they were or how they got there...

Ill leave you with a picture of the booty. Bear in mind that this was just my first visit. Once ive trained rigourously for many weeks, prepared myself mentally, written my name, address and phone number down on a bit of paper pinned to my shirt, I'll be right back there.

"When you can snatch this Number 2 Micro-Torx Driver from my hand, only *Then* will you be ready..."

Tōkyō

2005-09-20T21:33:00.000+09:00

Supermarkets Can Be Fun

2005-09-19T13:59:00.000+09:00

My local is a hoot! Kagemori Mall consists of a large supermarket, open till midnight every night, a huge 'drugstore', and "Shimamura Fashion Centre".

The Supermarket is called, appetisingly, "Belc". Every visit is an adventure. You can laugh at silly product names. Roll the dice and buy stuff that *looks* like something you recognise (warning "Peanut Soft" *looks* like peanut butter, but it is actually more like a pot of sugar with some peanuts and peanut colouring mixed in).

But the best thing is that they do have a lot of really yummy stuff, very cheap. Sushi and sashimi is a fraction of the price you pay in Australia. Lots of interesting dumplingy things, noodles, drinks, etc...

I couldnt resist trying these... And as the packet would seem to indicate, they were quite warm.

Shimamura Fashion Centre turned out to be much more fun that I first thought. I went in there to buy a bed sheet, and thought I'd see what else they had. The T-shirt section turned out to be a goldmine. I've bought a few as gifts for people back home, but if I can find a cheap shipping option, I'll buy a pile of them. They are only about $5aus each. Maybe have a party and give them out to people as they come in.

Back to the supermarket again: here is a photo of my favourite snack. Anyone able to translate? Spicy rice crackers, and at 99yen a packet, a total bargain.

Now, back to practicing. Got another lesson tonight. Coming along in leaps and bounds.

Shrine o' the times

2005-09-19T08:03:00.000+09:00

This little shrine has been made and is maintained by one of the locals in my street, just down the road a bit. Its a very 'down to earth' kinda shrine, with the kinda things a very 'ordinary' deity might need. A clock shaped like a giant watch. Some plastic flowers. A girly magazine. A cup of tea. Some cooking utensils. Basic stuff.

A quick update on the neighbours. It appears that The Mechanic is ClipClop Woman's husband or father. I can't tell which, but on inspection, their house is part of the Garage 'compound'. I got a cool recording yesterday of the local grandmas chatting and having a great old cackle.

Jitensha dewa arimasen

2005-09-18T12:31:00.000+09:00

After visiting a giant Bunnings type store, no bike as yet. My options there were a little limited - either a 3 speed 'ladies' style bike - the bog standard basic transport for all in these parts - for about $120 aus, or 6 speed fold-up bike for about $150. add about another $50 to each of those for gear rack, lock and lights. I thought pretty hard about the fold up option - which i could take with me on the trains when i go on the Grand Adventure in 2 weeks time, but just couldnt get my head around the logistics of travelling with it. It remains a definite option though. Opinions, anyone?

Aside from that, the hardware shops here are *far* superior to the ones at home. A backyard engineer's paradise. you want stainless steel cable in sizes down to 0.5mm. no problem. how about plywood? how does under 10 bucks for a large sheet of 12mm 7ply sound? same piece would get you almost no change from a pair of fifties back home. I could go on, but I'd just be torturing people. Including myself. I wonder how much a shipping container would cost to send home...

I'd like to find a real bike shop and see what the situation is there before I buy. Which probably means a trip into Tokyo - which is worthwhile just on its own. I wouldnt mind having some idea where to go before I set off, so I might survey everyone I can find here before I go. There are lots of westfield-style malls around outer Tokyo - I'd say a bike shop was sure to be found in one of them...

Two more photos of retro-style cars. The one on the left looks like on old Wolseley or something. "Enough!" you say, so I promise no more on them from now on.

But they are just so *cute*...

I mean, just look at this one - and two tone cream and beige paintwork!

Kyo ni kuruma de Tokyo ni ikimashita

2005-09-17T18:29:00.000+09:00

Today by car to Tokyo I went.

Its an hour and a half by car from Chichibu to where KZ teaches in Tokyo - at his wife Megumi's parents' place. The first 50 mins was through spectacular mountains with wild rivers and the ever present jungle. The rest of the trip was suburban Tokyo - for me as eye popping as the mountains.

The Japanese definately have a thing for Mini's. The cars, not the skirts. Almost the only pre-1995 car you ever see is a mini, usually done up like a replica racecar. That and VW Kombi vans. Everything else is so shiny and new it hurts your eyes. The current trend for modern versions of 1950's and '60s british cars goes deeper than I thought. Some fantastic new ones today. Cars are *cheap* here. I saw in a car yard a Honda Jazz, maybe a year or two older than mine, for the equivalent of about $5000 australian. They even make a 4wd version of the Jazz!

Luckily for me this cheapness extends to other modes of transport, and tomorrow I'm off to buy myself a bike. KZ tells me I can get a new bike for about $70 aus. My feeling is that there ought to be a huge market in 2nd hand bikes here, but there just doesnt seem to be. It appears they just get thrown away, or left to rot (or be eaten by the jungle). If I could figure out where the bicycle graveyard was, I'd just rescue one, but I have no idea where to start.

Election-Fist. This is a condition that politicians seem to suffer from at election time here. It seems there was a local election around the time I got here, and it was clear from the posters that there was an epidemic of Election Fist going around. Everyone had it, though there were many subtle variations. The version that hit most of the men made them look like power mad megalomaniacs, bent on world domination. The clenched fist held to one side, at about mid chest height - seeming to say either "And dont you ever come back!" or "If you only knew the *power* of the dark side...". The womens' variants were my favourites - one woman in particular who looked like a middle aged schoolteacher, holding her clenched fist low, with a naughty look on her face "ooh, look, ive got what it takes too - but shhh! dont tell anyone!"

No Ninja attacks today, but I saw my first Bosuzoku last night - the rebel motorbike revving yakuza wannabes. I heard them coming and got to the window of the van in time to see a black lexus with mega-dark tinted windows fly past at high speed, escorted by a pair of guys on what appeared to be trail bikes with no mufflers. The bike riders somehow managed to maintain forward motion while revving their bikes up and down as if they were on the starting grid of a motorbike grand prix.

And of course, there's the Love Truck.

Intanetto! w00teru!

2005-09-16T19:22:00.000+09:00

I've found a wireless connection! It only works if I sit on my doorstep though. but I've got net! I wont *ahem* borrow *ahem* too much bandwith though, but I did get a bunch of photos out to patchie, anna, juz and nick. Email them if you want to see. If I'm lucky, someone might put them up on the web somewhere... :)

We all troop down to Tokyo tomorrow for lessons, Kakizakai teaches there on Saturday, so we (the chichibu cru) go too. should be fun!

But, it means i need to do at least another hour's practice before bed...

but heres a pic of the bamboo forest that i walk through most days

Renshu ga owatte kara, I go for a walk.

2005-09-16T15:29:00.000+09:00

My neighbours. ClipClop Woman. The Mechanic. Always Running Woman. Curious Old Man. Boyfriend&Girlfriend, Burning Off Man, and The Old Gardener.

a funny bunch. Clipclop woman wears wooden sandals and lives opposite, with her family. The Mechanic runs the chichibu garage, which is across the road from me. they were working on the Chichibu Fire Engine yesterday - the teeniest fire engine youve ever seen :) Always Running Woman seems to always be late for things. Ive never seen her stand still - shes always running past in a blur, leaping over the bonnet of her car and screaming off. I sometimes want to flag her down and ask her what the story is. Curious Old Man walks his pointy dog up and down while trying not to appear to be checking me out. Boyfriend and Girlfriend are terribly cute. they come home from school together holding hands and being funny with each other. Burning Off Man lives behind me, and seems to enjoy nothing more than to get a good fire going in a metal bucket and burn off garden prunings. You smell him before you see him. The Old Gardener - she works the large vege plot behind me - always weeding this or pruning that. I hear the snip of her garden shears regularly. Shes the only one whos actually come up and talked to me - she walked around the caravan until i poked my head out, then we had a simple conversation in japanese, revolving around hot weather. she also asked me if i was living alone, and then had a mighty chuckle.

Im going to send a CD full of photos home today. so hopefully they'll turn up on the web somewhere soon.

ok! time to go! im being booted!

Intanetto tsukatte mo ii desu ka?

2005-09-13T12:51:00.000+09:00

Library again. 15 mins to work out how to get the keyboard to type in english. :)

The last few days have been great - getting settled, getting a practice routine going, getting bolder at the supermarket...

Bronwyn turned up yesterday, and I am no longer the only anglo face in town. After seeing her apartment, i've decided that Im pretty happy in the caravan - her apartment is nice - larger than I imagined, but quite dark, and I think it just wouldnt work for me. Kakizakai says there is a teeny house in his street that I might like, so i'll have a look at that, but really i'm quite settled where I am now.

Perfect cubes of　crustless white bread. skink sized lizards with yellow stripes and cobalt blue tails. Rice crackers that taste *exactly* like vegemite on toast! the most fantastic manhole covers on earth. mountains! forest!

hey nat! I sat in a bamboo grove and played my flute for you! when i figure out how, photos to follow!

Chichibu is an amazing place. the town itself is not all that exciting, except in its Japanese-ness. but the setting is extraordinary - most streets end up becoming little tracks off into the forest - each one a little adventure. everything here is reduced　ｂｙ 1/3 (at least) - houses, cars, etc... but instead of being cramped, this seems to strangely have the reverse effect - the place feels spacious somehow. because everyone is sharing the same space, there is a huge amount of consideration and respect given - eg, there are no footpaths, so the cars share the roads with cyclists (of which there are many) and pedestrians. and I mean *share*. its just lovely.

there appears to be a retro thing going on with the cars here. many people get around in what appear to be modern versions of 1950's and '60s cars - imagine a 2005 version of a Morris 1100... again, photos soon, I hope.

sayonara for now!

Shakuhachi o fuku koto ga dai suki!

This may work...

2005-09-09T12:22:00.000+09:00

If you are reading this, then it does. :)

I'm at the local library in Chichibu, using the internet here - but it has some kind of url filter that is preventing me updating my blog properly. The trip here was fun, and plenty mind bending. Tokyo is a mad place - in steel and concrete it mirrors the tropical jungle that covers anything not continually in use. Pictures when I get a chance. The funniest thing i saw on the way in was a giant bookstore, whose sign instructed the world to "Book Off!"

Crazy monorails, vege patches in the middle of hyper-dense urban spaces, an interesting collision of old and new, ultra-modern and decay. city and forest. (theres a totoro in there for sure!). 　Captain Stag outdoor-wear, signage *everywhere* but none of it readable to me. The railway graf and tagging is almost exclusively in english though - bit strange.

And outside tokyo... **MOUNTAINS** real ones. pointy, steep and covered in impenetrable forest. Australia is an altogether slower, older place, where you have to take time to find the life of the land. Japan, on the other hand, will happily eat you alive the minute you stand still. Verdant and voracious. Movies like Princess Mononoke, and others make a more direct sense, even after just a day or two.

As for me, im temporarily housed in a caravan near Kakizakai's house, waiting for an
apartment to become free, hopefully on sunday. Kakizakai and his family are great - very welcoming. I had dinner with them last night.

My Japanese is already being pushed. I successfully had a short conversation with a guy on the train, to find out whether i needed to change trains or not. Sumimasen... Chichibu ni ikimasu. Norikae wa arimasu ka? :) Which seemed to do the trick. The helpful local then interrogated his mobile phone, which appeared to be connected to the net, and told me in japanese that it was good to stay on this train, and it would take about an hour to get to Chichibu from where we were.

I did, however, confuse one my new neighbours - an elderly japanese woman who was curious about the appearance of life in the caravan on the block next to her house. She did manage to communicate that she thought the weather was hot, and ask whether i was staying in the caravan alone. she thought it was all very humourous. :)

More tomorrow perhaps. This afternoon's mission is to secure a phonecard of some sort.

w00t!

Passing Time

2005-09-07T09:05:00.000+09:00

17J. That will be me for the next while.
China Airlines flight CI52. Airbus A340-300(C/Y).

Luggage went through no problems, despite being 5kg overweight :) That was really the last worry I had. My hand luggage weighs a ton, thanks to a stack of books and a laptop. Saskia and Rick took me to the airport and helped me till I passed the point of no return. Cheers guys - so much nicer to be seen off by friends, and I got to see Sas before I went. :)

Boarding in an hour... La la laaa...

Damn - I just remembered I forgot to turn off the fridge. :)

Day Before

2005-09-06T14:07:00.000+09:00

Yesterday, I was nervous. Today, im excited :)

I took some photos of my space the other day, to print out to show people in Japan where I live.

Packing is pretty much done. Just some minor tweaking to get under the weight limit. The reason I'm so close to it is all the camping gear. Tent, sleeping bag, thermarest, trangia, etc. If I didnt have that, it would be a cruise, but i want to try and do quite a bit of camping in Chichibu-Tama national park.

Ive had email from Kakizakai-sensei that he has an apartment waiting for me - which is great - I was a little worried. He is also going to pick me up from the train station in Chichibu. Getting there is going to be interesting. I land in Narita at 1pm. The train out to Chichibu from Tokyo leaves from Ikebukuro station. There are two main ways to get to Ikebukuro - there is a direct train that comes in from the airport, but it only runs every so often, or a much more frequent train that comes into another station that is on the tokyo ring line (the Yamanote line) - which would mean swapping trains, and going round the Yamanote line to Ikebukuro...

fun fun fun :)

Trancendent Spiritual Experiences, Talking Toilets and Ninjas

2005-09-01T11:39:00.000+09:00

Dave has made the request that I report at least 1 bizarre gadget, 1 transcendant spiritual experience and 1 ninja attack per week.

I'll see what I can do... :)

In the meantime, today I have my last Japanese lesson before I leave.

If anyone is looking for a great Japanese language teacher in Sydney, I can highly recommend Michiko Honda (email me for contact details) - she teaches Japanese at the WEA, and also takes private students. I guess I'm about to take the big exam :)

I'll tell you how I go.

Fogbank

2005-08-31T18:44:00.000+09:00

One week today, and I'll be on a plane on my way to Japan, to spend three months studying shakuhachi with Kakizakai Kaoru. I'll be living in Chichibu, kakizakai-sensei's hometown, in Saitama precfecture, about 100km east-north-east of Tokyo.

The shakuhachi is a traditional Japanese end-blown bamboo flute. The particular tradition that i am studying is the playing of Honkyoku, which are a type of piece intended as a zen meditation. In australia, I study the Chikuho lineage pieces with Riley Lee and Bronwyn Kirkpatrick, though ive been studying more Kinko school pieces with Bronwyn lately. Kakizakai-sensei teaches the Kinko pieces, and some of these are what i'll be working on during my time in Japan.

Right now, its like walking towards a fogbank, with no clue to what might lie inside. My imagined plan is to settle in, then start a regular schedule of lessons and daily practice. At this stage, i'm going to start by trying to practice for 6 hours a day, and i imagine having lessons every second day. How closely this will correspond to what actually happens is anyone's guess.