tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19892795437684119982024-03-19T05:28:11.463-07:00you're doing What this summer?dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-42761826577868752232012-08-03T03:34:00.000-07:002012-08-03T03:34:52.993-07:00it's been a while since i've really been able to set aside time to try to post - sorry about that! i've been back in kyoto for several days now, but of course, as soon as i got a decent nights' sleep in, i was back out trying not to waste any valuable time, walking around for 7-9 hours every day to see as much as possible in heat that is still pretty bad even if it's not quite as nasty as i thought it would be. it's been in the upper 90's every day lately, i think. i expected it to be over 100- i guess the summer i was here 2 years ago was a record breaker. go figure.
i've seen too much in the past few days to be able to remember all at once, especially right now - my head is totally cooked. but yesterday i spent the entire day at fushimi inari taisha, which was probably about a half an hour walk south from my guest house. but it was hot as hell, so i took the subway a few stops. everyone's seen a photo from this shrine at some point or another - it has what looks like, and what i thought was just a long, long pathway under bright red torii (gates) packed tightly together that go uphill someplace. i thought there was one path that led to the main shrine. i didn't realize how much more there is than that. the main buildings are actually down almost at street level, a few blocks from the train station with plenty of omiyage shops and restaurants between.
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the famous torii are actually scattered along a surprisingly large trail system in the forest on the mountain/hills behind, and as many of them as there are (hundreds? thousands?) there have got to be twice as many actual inari shrines, from huge to tiny, in clusters all over the place in the woods along the paths. most of them are in tightly packed clusters, with very narrow almost accidental paths that somehow make all of the shrines accessible, technically. a lot of these clusters of small shrines sort of center around one larger one that faces a small shop that sells some combination of shrine supplies, omiyage, and food/drinks. some are more isolated and would have been completely silent if not for the almost deafening cicadas and other bugs and birds in the woods. there was one in particular that i spent a long time taking pictures and video in, and finally heard someone sweeping after what must have been at least 20 minutes (fushimi inari taisha is a very popular tourist spot, so it was weird to be able to spend so much time in a group of shrines off the path without seeing or hearing any other tourists walking around).
oh crap, i've exceeded my quota. will have to delete some old photos so i can fill up this post. be back soon...dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-22048975315559306222012-07-19T21:31:00.001-07:002012-08-03T02:51:30.061-07:00We had a few hours off yesterday afternoon and went on a short local hike. I heard these cicadas for the first time two years ago, drifting down from the mountains that surround the valleys we've been working in. They start singing late afternoon and stop when it starts to get dark out. It's been one of my favorite sounds since the first time I heard it. It was a little different so close up, but still so cool that when they suddenly started up all around us in the cedar trees, I was making a wizard metal fist before I even realized what I was doing.
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<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/R5L0oWv6fmU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-19620377991347343972012-07-06T23:02:00.001-07:002012-07-06T23:02:58.325-07:00Sorry I haven't really had time to work on posting over the past week - work in Sasayama is a lot more hectic than it was two years ago. The situation here has changed quite a bit, and though there's never a dull moment, we start work at 7 and I usually can't sit down to do anything like this until around 10 PM, and then I'm too tired to be able to concentrate on anything anyway. It's fun, but I don't know how many pictures I'm going to be able to take this time. It's also been raining a lot, which makes sightseeing bike rides or walks on the weekends kind of difficult. I'm here for 3 more weeks - if I can't update much while I'm here, I should have time once I go back to Kyoto.
That thatched roof house in the first pictures is where I'm staying. We're working on the white building on the right.
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-9083244252346152632012-06-26T04:13:00.000-07:002012-06-26T04:13:02.550-07:00my brain hit a wall sometime in the middle of the day today - seeing too many beautiful places in a short amount of time. i went to arashiyama, on the western side of kyoto, if you want to look it up. i took a TON of pictures, but i'm not ready to sit here and start working on them. taking the bus to sasayama tomorrow - hopefully after a little decompression i can get back on it. had a great time today- really, i'm just a little overwhelmed, i guess. kyoto's famous for this.dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-23899906750051301932012-06-25T07:56:00.004-07:002012-06-25T07:56:52.411-07:00map schmapof course i went back to kiyomizudera - i've been around the surrounding streets (which are full of souvenir shops and food) several times. i've been eating too much matcha ice cream, way too much matcha everything, at this point. <br />
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iced pickle on a stick. really good in hot weather<br />
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i've seen these things running around in anime before, but didn't realize they came from something. stupid me.<br />
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there's a lot in the hills around kiyomizudera besides kiyomizudera. my pictures came out terribly, but i hiked through a lot of places including a very, very steep old hillside graveyard, and up these stairs to a shrine at the top. i wanted to take the other one that went through the woods, i really did, but the mosquitoes were getting out of hand. <br />
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it seems like trying to plan where to go and what to see ahead of
time is just a waste of effort in a place like this, when stumbling upon
things works so well. i can't even remember where i was trying to go
when i banged a left into Gion and after wandering in a circle found
some pretty big-looking temple grounds that were closed for the night.
because it's pretty close to where i'm staying, i decided to come back
during the day to see what might be open. <br />
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and i'm really glad i decided to go into the dark reception room with a sign i couldn't really read where they were charging admission to get in. i think it was about 7 dollars. <br />
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according to the pamphlet i got on the way in, kenninji is the oldest zen temple in kyoto, founded about 1,010 years ago. <br />
there's a covered walkway that leads to a separate building, where you have to put on red slippers to cross, since you left your shoes at the main entrance 2 hours ago... i was curious about what was in this other building, because it's big, kind of dark, and stood out a bit even from the outside.<br />
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and what i found was pretty freaking cool<br />
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-127073189407505662012-06-23T07:47:00.000-07:002012-06-24T06:44:56.327-07:00too many mediocre pictures<br />
Left the guest house in Osaka a couple of days ago and spent about a day and a half with friends who live in Nishinomiya. We visited a friend of theirs who lives further west, and whose husband has a second, very rural rental house used as a studio for making pottery. Really, really nice pottery. He wasn't there when we went, but we had an amazing lunch<br />
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(the other half didn't fit on the table - there was much more), and somewhere in there is fresh, real wasabi that Masa-san grated on-site (you Never see real wasabi in the US - it's always horseradish), the best homemade inarizushi ever, and lots of other good, fresh food that for whatever reason is difficult to replicate at home. The mountains in the area are very close, and the view from the house was amazing. It was very quiet - a car would occasionally go by behind us on the road, but I remember hearing mostly trees in the wind and an uguisu showing off. I tried to take photos of the scenery from inside the house, but they didn't really come out.<br />
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then we took a short walk a little further uphill to the shrine/temple which has a creepy story attached - I'm not sure I understood it exactly, but for some reason this shrine is well known, or popular, or good for....somehow tied to a particular kind of 'request' - women whose husbands had taken up mistresses would sneak out at two AM (much worse than midnight here, I hear) in white kimono (probably wearing candles on their heads before street lights existed), making sure no one saw them, and at the shrine, would drive a nail through a straw doll representing the mistress into the wood, wishing death upon them. Pretty specific, huh? I can't imagine being female and living in a time where they were so powerless and desperate when things went wrong that resorting to this kind of tactic really seemed reasonable. Lucky me.<br />
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We got back kind of late, so I spent that night in
Nishinomiya as well, and late morning when I finally woke up, took a
walk up a nearby river. Not too far in, I found a bush full of these
butterflies.<br />
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I also heard and saw frogs for the first time this trip. Speaking of, saw two snakes as well - one black one at the shrine, and another brown one on the path next to the river here.<br />
Then this afternoon I lugged my stupid heavy bag back down to Osaka and up to Kyoto. I had reserved a room in a guest house here for just a few days, because Kyoto is really amazing and I haven't given myself enough time to walk around and see things here. The guest house has a main building with a cafe on the first floor, and an annex not too far away, where I'm staying. It was a little difficult to find, even with a map (mostly because some streets here are so small or narrow that they don't bother putting them on a lot of maps) but I found it (my shoulders are still a little traumatized from the long walk with all that weight) and it's really, really awesome.<br />
When I finally turned down the right side street, I thought it was another wrong turn, because I saw this, and I was sure it was supposed to be on the right side<br />
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turns out the sign I was looking for was just small. And the building is nicer than I was expecting. <br />
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It's on the right, there. Gojo guest house.<br />
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It's an old building that fortunately hasn't been "updated' much - the hallways are solid wood floors, not quite level, smooth and waxy, the walls are all fresh plaster, and the fusuma are all papered, just like they should be. <br />
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That's the corner of my 3-tatami room. It's pretty small, but it's private, lockable, and less than 40 dollars a night. Not bad for a short stay.<br />
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genkan <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzR5sjQYmsi8h1RyZdVpTJsqaTRE3MNW2AU2EVBTfTu2yvkC582DK1BQi2gO-0IKMBWHmPQFXX2eUllABlae2LRCZuFq-hI-o72Fz8inqSQVouWQk3N-5dQq4PQYCmTWkuibUKaeD14VM5/s1600/IMG_4955.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzR5sjQYmsi8h1RyZdVpTJsqaTRE3MNW2AU2EVBTfTu2yvkC582DK1BQi2gO-0IKMBWHmPQFXX2eUllABlae2LRCZuFq-hI-o72Fz8inqSQVouWQk3N-5dQq4PQYCmTWkuibUKaeD14VM5/s640/IMG_4955.JPG" width="640" /></a><br />
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So after finally dumping my stuff in my room and taking a shower, I took a walk up the hill, eastward - the sun was just setting and the view was amazing. It was steep - Kiyomizudera, that temple above the trees from the other photos, is not too far behind me where I stood taking this picture. I'm right down the street, near Gojo station- you can look it up on Google maps if you want -<br />
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Kyōto-fu, Kyōto-shi, Higashiyama-ku, Komatsuchō, 11−26</div>
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I have more photos, but I am exhausted. There are plenty more coming - I have a lot to see in the next few days!</div>
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<br /></div>dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-53858806341122149452012-06-20T08:23:00.000-07:002012-06-23T06:33:38.982-07:00always at the last minute...I went to see this<br />
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And saw the hell out of it<br />
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and it saw me, too<br />
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but I had all day, so I wandered north and east, through here<br />
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which looked like a pretty even split of shrine ruins and more newly-built ones, and which definitely felt like it must have been haunted (and of course it was empty) <br />
and then just up a minute on a road where I thought I'd find nothing I saw this<br />
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which looked interesting<br />
and at first i was like<br />
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And then I was like<br />
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and i thought hey, this is way too familiar<br />
and then I remembered this<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjDjGQQ_MI0Q5Jc8du9ZiOpwQ1-MIXzSRYznOOQhLYNFn23Na4MtZ3D03KwEo7_km_4E8ZD2sjrZPu07Py9o10y8_raivflho6VbsmXnvYPxNhsH-7R4JDxJ3B9ZtjyM31BiJLqyAK52y9/s1600/eveninginnara.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjDjGQQ_MI0Q5Jc8du9ZiOpwQ1-MIXzSRYznOOQhLYNFn23Na4MtZ3D03KwEo7_km_4E8ZD2sjrZPu07Py9o10y8_raivflho6VbsmXnvYPxNhsH-7R4JDxJ3B9ZtjyM31BiJLqyAK52y9/s1600/eveninginnara.jpg" /></a></div>
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and then I came home and looked it up. That print has been one of my favorites for years, but I never knew anything about it. Apparently the artist was a Japanese American who lived in Boston, at least for a while. The temple is Nigatsudou, and (according to Wikipedia) though the main building burned down in a fire in the 1600s and had to be rebuilt, it was originally built almost 1300 years ago. There is a very interesting article about the annual festival, called Omizutori, which has happened every year on March 12 since the beginning, in 752.<br />
here - <br />
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omizutori<br />
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I spoke to someone working at the temple for a little while and when he showed me photos of the priests with this giant torch (it has to be 5 or 6 feet long) that they carry around this temple every year, I really couldn't believe it. It's amazing that there has only been one fire all this time. If I could come back in March, there's no way I'd miss Omizutori. <br />
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I took well over 500 photos today - there are a lot more decent ones, but they'll have to wait along with hundreds from other places I have barely mentioned. I do have a lot of catching up to do with photo posts... but I am leaving my dingy guesthouse room in Osaka tomorrow to spend a day and a half with friends and then go to Kyoto for a few days on my way to the farm. So today I made sure to go back to Nara, and fortunately the weather was good. I heard it was the first capital city, and is much older than Kyoto. Don't quote me on that - I'm way waaaaay behind on my Japanese history. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm getting to it.<br />
But Nara is beautiful. It's that place you've probably heard of where deer hang out all over the place, like it's no big deal - there are so many places to see within walking distance of the train station, all around the public park, it's kind of ridiculous. I walked around for at least 6 hours despite the (still) sorry shape of my left foot, and wish I had another day to go back soon. I wish I'd realized what was out there a few weeks ago, when I was worried I had too much free time. Nara takes less than an hour on the local train from Osaka, and costs a little over 5 dollars each way. The train ride is relatively scenic, too.<br />
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-64900598749359738532012-06-16T07:40:00.001-07:002012-06-16T07:53:49.268-07:00keep in mind...I did not intend to spend so much time sitting on my hands (running and walking around in circles) in Osaka for a whole month. You know, when you make plans to spend weeks in a place you've never been to, you can try to anticipate what it's going to be like, to a point, but you're bound to be wrong about some things and just way off-base on others. And then, if you're an idiot like me, you're just going to miss things that are easily Googled because you're a lazy arse.<br />
I was supposed to be spending more time over the past month STUDYING. That was what I intended to do while I was here - of course the research I did in Boston before coming here was pretty half-assed, and I failed to realize that the subway system in Osaka is expensive - more expensive than Tokyo and much more expensive than Boston. I also thought I could walk 5 miles each way to go to a class if I had to - what the HELL was I thinking? There's no way. Not even for me. It's funny, sometimes, when I think about how I almost randomly ended up in this particular neighborhood out of all the affordable neighborhoods in the country. But, this <i>particular</i> neighborhood has been likened to a third world country's capital city by several different people of several different backgrounds by this point, and so in accordance with that I could easily buy a very, very cheap bicycle and just hurtle myself northward, flying in the face of all traffic laws like everyone else and their infant children along for the ride, and hope I survived the commute for 4 weeks. But having had too much experience in Boston as a messenger and never wanting to be hit by a car again if I can help it, I decided not to go that route either. Funny coincidence... there have just this past week been a couple of random violent incidents in this general area, in neighborhoods I have been through several times - supposedly caused, to some extent, by issues having to do with the rising rates of unemployment and homelessness here just like in the states. Japan is really still a very safe place to visit, despite everything, but I've unwittingly stressed out a couple of acquaintances of mine simply by choosing to stay in an area that is seeing so much turbulence at the moment. I haven't been knifed yet, though, so it's cool.dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-54323333295119786462012-06-16T07:16:00.000-07:002012-06-16T07:26:44.997-07:00running schedule, shot all to hellI think it was Wednesday, 3 days ago now, that I last went running down to and around the park. With all this free time, I was being pretty good about going every other day, and my feet were only mildly complaining despite the fact that I more or less tripled my average weekly mileage, and also switched to those fancypants weirdo minimalist running shoes when I came here. Then on Wednesday evening, even though I had put in the 8 miles after coffee, still being wide awake, I decided to go out hunting for this large shrine I had seen on a Google map. It looked like it was relatively close to the park, just more, um, west. I run to the park every other day and then go around it a couple of times and then run back, so what's the big deal, right? Ugh. I have a decent sense of direction and can usually find my way around a place with straight roads easily, especially if landmarks stand out. And landmarks <i>definitely</i> stand out here. I just tend to overestimate the size of a place when I look at a map, especially if it's a map of Japan. The streets and blocks are so small, relative to my own, that when I look at a map of a neighborhood that consists of maybe 2000 blocks, it looks huge even though it may actually be very small. Knowing that, I overcompensated and went out to find this place thinking it wasn't all that far, when really, it was about 4 miles each way.<br />
Which would be fine if I hadn't already run 8 that morning. Point being, it's Saturday and my feet are still angry at me and I can't run. Good thing it's been pouring out all night, otherwise I'd feel pretty guilty.<br />
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I was glad to have gone, though. I walked for what felt like ages, and was just starting to wonder if I'd misunderstood what I saw online when I found the public park that you walk through to get to the entrance. They're separated by a train station and a road that is almost completely dominated by an old tram, a lot like the green line. Well, sort of. These are two entirely different train lines, mind you.<br />
We won't talk about how this tram also happens to run right by the corner of the neighborhood I'm staying in...<br />
It was late and a lot of areas around the temple, buildings especially, were closed for the night. But I'm not sure whether it's because they're public or not, but places like this seem to be open and more or less well-lit all night long. I like to go at times like this because they are usually almost empty, and it can make for some really good picture-taking. If I had a tripod it would be even better. <br />
The road that runs under the elevated train tracks between the park and the gateway to the shrine had an interesting combination of stone lanterns, corner stores, noodle shops and bars, fortune-telling spots that were closed but still plastered with hand-written signs, and of course, vending machines. Just like most other streets that aren't entirely residential, really. <br />
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That's looking back toward the street from the gateway.<br />
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This was a short but very steep bridge with a ridiculous rise and run - I had to be pretty careful going down on the other side. I heard from someone that the place gets packed on new years' - the bridge must get awfully sketchy when it's full of people bumping into each other in the middle where there's no railing.<br />
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By the time I got back, though, I was limping like a real jerk. I'm still waiting to see how long it's going to take to go away. Stubbornness for fun and profit!<br />
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-28278485540864617292012-06-16T05:44:00.002-07:002012-06-16T08:09:22.801-07:00So it was cloudy yesterday, and got progressively more humid over the course of the afternoon. Took that laundry in real quick, and walked back north to the Shitennoji area to find a couple of other, smaller spots I had yet to check out, all in the general area of the central temple. There is a large, maybe 6-lane road that runs north from my neighborhood through this area, and whenever I would walk back and forth from one of the two entrances to Shitennoji that I knew of, I saw several other, smaller spots that looked like shrines way across the street. When you look the area up on a map, I think it's all sort of grouped together like one large site, even though the smaller parts are seriously scattered, often partway down winding, extremely narrow streets full of every possible kind of dentist/udonya/love hotel/stockbroker/residential kind of building. A lot of them can really only be found by a little aimless wandering around, in my experience. But that's how I like to do things, so we're all set. <br />
There was one shrine that immediately caught my eye the first time I went up that way, and though it couldn't have covered more than 2000 square feet, once I finally went in, I could have spent the rest of the afternoon there if it wasn't full of mosquitoes. It's called Horikoshi jinja.<br />
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'black dragon shrine' - there was also a 'white dragon shrine' nearby. there's an explanation on the sign at the entrance, but i haven't tried to translate it yet. a lot of signage at temples is just too difficult for me, but this one's a little simpler, so i think i can actually handle it with a dictionary. And some time.</div>
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<br /></div>dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-55834342325981086912012-06-14T23:23:00.001-07:002012-06-14T23:23:22.946-07:00i'm trying, i really amI think that a couple of those posts had a lot of duplicate photos - I was trying to get them up quickly and didn't take much time to check. I have hundreds of mediocre photos to sort through to try to find the better ones, so I'm thinking maybe I should be a little more selective and spend the time writing rather than just posting as many photos as possible.<br />
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To keep on schedule, I should be running today, but that long walk two nights ago on my search for sumiyoshi taisha pissed off my left foot, and it's still complaining, so even though I see the mileage going way down in the weeks to come, I really can't risk an injury today. And naturally, today the weather is appropriately perfect for a long run. Aaargh.<br />
Instead, it's early afternoon on Friday, I'm airing out the futon again, and drying some laundry on the roof. Clothes dryers are pretty unusual here - there's one in the laundromat down the street, but it's ridiculously expensive. I'm not sure if it's an electricity thing, or if it's just painfully obvious how unnecessary they are, but most people don't use dryers. Actually, after having talked to another tenant (from Australia, I think), I'm getting the feeling that we're the weird ones for using dryers most of the time. Huh. <br />
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The air in Osaka isn't the cleanest, as far as I can tell. It seems smoggy some days, a little worse than Boston is most of the time. Could just be the weather, though - it is pretty humid here even now, though the rainy season doesn't seem to have started yet. I don't think I'd want to hang my laundry out on my own back porch, considering the traffic that passes by on Lowell street all the time. But, if I lived in a place with a little more distance from car exhaust, I would definitely do this at home. There is something hypnotic about standing in the middle of a bunch of fabric while it flutters in the wind. <br />
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The guest house building is 3 stories tall, with a common room on the roof. The clothes lines are outside its door.<br />
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These are from a much sunnier day last week - I'm less than a couple of miles away from Shitennoji, which I think I've already mentioned a few times on Facebook, anyway. I like to go to temples at night, but it is good to go during the day too - there are always a lot of people out even on weekdays, and everything's not closed up like it is at night.<br />
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...and the inevitable photo proving that I really am here and not just lifting these from someone else's life.<br />
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-18119400123734645022012-06-05T10:12:00.000-07:002012-06-16T07:38:49.651-07:00picturesOkay, so these pictures are pretty much in reverse order, but I'll just try to go through them the same way. I was lucky enough to be able to go to Kyoto with a friend who lives down near Kobe, not that we were really asking many questions. <br />
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This is Kiyomizudera, seen from a walkway built along the side of a steep hill (can I call it a small mountain?) that you get to once you've walked up through the entrance and gone through that main veranda. Most pictures of Kiyomizu are taken from this side, for obvious reasons. It was cloudy that day, and early afternoon, so the lighting for pictures wasn't so hot. There was more behind us on the other side, but it was all under construction, so all I could really see was scaffolding.<br />
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This is a little earlier on. That building comes out over a giant scaffold, in part, but is also built into the side of the hill, so it's not completely sitting on stilts. Still, the whole thing felt very fragile somehow, even though the support beams were ginormous, like every other temple I've been to. </div>
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This little row of tables was actually after going around the side and back down to the bottom. This is a cafe or something, where you can take your shoes off and sit and drink coffee or something, and look down into the trees on the left side.</div>
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just something along the way</div>
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I remember taking this from the bottom, but didn't walk up to see what was there for some reason.<br />
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this is right in the middle of the main building that sits in the trees in the first photos. You're usually not allowed to walk right in to where people are praying to take pictures like a baka gaijin, though I'm sure there are a lot of photos of the interiors of temples floating around the internet. They're usually very fancy. I'm happier taking pictures of the woodwork anyway, though.<br />
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You can see that building that I mentioned, covered in scaffold on the back right of this one- this is facing east, I think. You come in from the west, walk east and turn south, turn around to take pictures, and then go downhill and come back around north/east at the bottom. <br />
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looking west?<br />
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I think that spot down there in the center is the aforementioned 'kiyo mizu' (pure water) <br />
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These red/white buildings are at the entrance - there are all kinds of technical terms and reasons for them in the history of Japanese temple architecture that I should know by now, but don't. So for now, they're red/white buildings...<br />
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So we found our way up to Kiyomizu from sort of a back road, which was a little further south than the main road, I think. It ran east-west on the side of the hill, with a bunch of small houses and shrines on the upper, norther side, and a giant cemetery built into the steep, southern side. This was one of them. I think a lot of small groups of shrines are on private property, or that people work as caretakers of the shrines on public property. Either way, you will often see a residence and a group of shrines all in one place, sometimes fenced in and sometimes not. It's a very interesting setup, moving to visit, and something sadly missing from our landscape, dominated as it has been by christianity. The cat may be a housepet, but like all the park cats in Osaka, who knows. They weren't very fond of people. <br />
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This is the road leading up. It's probably about 6 or 7 feet wide. Most side streets out here are about that, or if they're supposed to be two-way, they might be 10-12 feet wide. But cars here are usually smaller, too, so it works out. Sort of.<br />
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You never get far without coming across a vending machine around here. <br />
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I think this was where the road started. We had just walked out the back of another tiny, almost empty, beautifully maintained park that was behind me on the right when I took this. <br />
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This was the outer wall of a completely different place, some huge garden that we didn't pay to go into, because there were way too many places to see in Kyoto for one afternoon.<br />
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..... <br />
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Aaaaaaand all these are from Namba, an insane shopping-type
neighborhood that might be something like if you crossed Times Square,
Haymarket, Faneuil Hall and every other overcrowded urban market you can
think of, mushed them all together, and then, well, I guess I really
can't describe it very well. There are at least two Starbucks and a
Mister Donut, though, in case you were wondering. There are a lot of
large chain stores out here, including plenty of western ones, but small, I mean tiny family-owned businesses
are everywhere, too. EVERYWHERE. Which is nice if you don't want to hand all your hard-earned tourist money over to large corporations. I have been meaning to take some pictures of the local market streets too, but it's so awkward sometimes<br />
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I remember this side street off of a side street- it had to have been less than 3 feet wide.<br />
I think in older cities, these kinds of narrow streets are common, but in a relatively new, ridiculously large place like America, you never see them, so for me at least, the novelty of ultra-narrow, dark and winding alleys like this still hasn't worn off. Though I have yet to find anything I want or need once I've been down them, other than photos. If I had friends in Osaka and/or was a meat eater, I would never be able to cover much ground, because I'd be stopping every 20 feet to try a new place. <br />
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<br /></div>dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-40148265278286885822012-06-05T09:20:00.001-07:002012-06-14T07:07:56.267-07:00more pictures<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-46668634027372218832012-06-05T09:00:00.000-07:002012-06-14T07:51:20.602-07:00pictures<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-15572938168567515322012-05-31T07:31:00.000-07:002012-05-31T07:31:50.003-07:00I don't think that I'm a particularly talkative person, maybe compared to the people I normally cross paths with at home. But since I've been here, the low levels of interaction that I normally get are missing, and the effects are surprisingly strong sometimes.<br />
Typically, people voluntarily take on a vow of silence, and usually see them through in special rural retreats, far away from civilization. I am gagged in a way, being here alone like this, but I'm also surrounded by tons of people who gawk at me from a distance, probably assuming I can't communicate at all, and probably thinking it wouldn't be a very good idea to try regardless. I'm not always impatient or intolerant, but there are moments when this really drives me nuts. And having nothing really going on, there's too much time to let it get to me. I'm disappointed that I didn't think to come up with a backup plan to ensure that I wouldn't be here with nothing to do for 4 weeks, to avoid this.<br />
I have nothing but free time right now, and am always restless, so I spend most of my time walking. If not running. This means I spend too much time on the sidewalks. Here, where they are actually separated from the street by a curb (narrow side streets just have a dotted white line on one side most of the time, if anything), they're split into a wider side and a narrower one - the wide side is often painted red and marked with signs for bikes. Everyone rides bikes here. Everyone carts their infants/toddlers around on bikes, while text messaging... and all the other kids ride their own bikes. No one wears helmets (I'm mostly thinking about the kids here), no one sticks to one side or follows any kind of rule even though there are apparently some in writing somewhere, seeing as how sidewalks are clearly separated into two different sections and someone spends all the money to make them that way. It's a free-for-all, and I guess the only reason it works is because people don't freak out here at the drop of, well, a foot. They get in each others' way constantly because everyone is just careening around, weaving all over the place. Any of my friends from downtown can probably imagine how psychologically draining it is for me to even just watch this kind of a shitshow, never mind wade through it. It's also a major reason why I'm actually afraid to get a cheap bike and ride in traffic here, in addition to the whole left-side-of-the-road thing. It will be good to get up to Sasayama and field work next month, despite the 100-degree, 85% humidity kind of weather that's coming.dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-5776814770573391452012-05-28T06:42:00.003-07:002012-05-28T06:45:24.858-07:00I was just looking over some writing that I tried to do in Tokyo last week- just thinking-out-loud stuff that I thought I would edit a little and then upload here. I'm kind of glad I didn't- it's pretty bad. There are things I would like to remember. There are things I would like to describe to other people who have never been here. But I am completely disorganized and haven't taken a writing class in years, so being able to control what I'm trying to get across is not something that comes naturally.<br />
The first week was strange - the hotel I chose happened to be in an area with a lot of students but no tourist attractions, which was good but not very photo-worthy. Jet lag was a bitch - my legs were screwed up for almost 10 days, though fortunately I was able to do a little running despite the marbles in my calves. Coffee is really expensive - a 20 oz cup (yeah, big, I know) from Starbucks here is over 5 dollars. That's just regular coffee, no fancypants stuff added. Being a vegetarian narrowed things down a little, but having no kitchen and then on top of that trying not to spend $25 a day on food meant that I was under-eating pretty hard. I have to admit that feeling wobbly from hunger was at least a twice-a-day occurrence until maybe 2 days ago (there's a small kitchen in my room in Osaka, and I finally started cooking a little).<br />
There are large chain stores out here, of course, but small businesses of all kinds are everywhere, so now that I'm here, I can get bananas or oranges as cheap as at home, eggs, avocados, tofu, pickles, and stuff like that at normal prices, from several different spots outside of the local supermarket. Rice is expensive, but it's Japanese rice, so what can you expect? I could also get my teeth looked at within 2 blocks of my room. Or see a doctor or a chiropractor. Convenience stores are everywhere, and way too convenient. They carry more 'real' food than ours do, so they're a lot harder to avoid. Most of the time they're pretty cheap, too. I have yet to go into a Mister Donuts, but it's only a matter of time. Have you ever seen the Japanese version of donuts? Dear god... There are cafes, izakaya, bakeries and tiny food stalls everywhere - okonomiyaki (which I recently found out I can actually eat, if I'm careful) udon and soba, takoyaki and yakitori, gyudon, katsu, and all kinds of stuff I can't eat, and sushi of course. and vending machines, damn them all. <br />
Anyway, it's difficult for me to have so much time off. I'm always happier with something to do, which is why I decided to spend a month in Osaka taking a class instead of hopping around volunteering at different places, or finding something completely new and different to do (as long as it's cheap). Now that I'm here, I've realized that the class isn't really a good idea. It's further away than I thought, prices have gone up, and the trains are ridiculously expensive. So I'll save some money by not taking it, but I have already paid for a month in this 'guest house', so I can't just take off and do something else without wasting a lot of money on rent here. So if the class is out, I need to find other ways to try to get speaking practice in. But I'm here alone, so I spend most of my time, well, alone. I can't usually just strike up a conversation with any random person on the street. A few people have come up to talk to me since I got here a couple of weeks ago, but it's still pretty rare. People mind their own business here just like they do in Boston, for the most part. Sure, I get stared at pretty often, but again, I'm not in an area with a ton of tourists, so I do kind of stick out, tattoos or not. If anything, though, it makes most people want to talk to me less, not more. Most of them assume I can't speak any Japanese at all, probably. I've heard that's a real obnoxious problem for foreigners that actually live here long-term and are pretty fluent. I can imagine it getting old after a while.dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-86592939305875095722012-05-27T06:54:00.000-07:002012-05-28T05:55:56.198-07:00creeping around jinja is so much better at night<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">relatively sure those are all grave markers</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">sanmen daikokuten - three headed great black heaven... or something similar. originally a warrior god, these days god of farmers, food and good fortune. the shrine was very ominous-looking, especially in the dark. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">bridge on the long path to meiji jingu</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-53088629593766542362012-05-27T06:00:00.003-07:002012-05-28T06:12:51.259-07:00I don't remember whether I noticed it in Tokyo or not, but soon after I got to Osaka I started seeing a lot of plastic bottles, full of water, outside houses along the side of the road. I think I assumed the first one I saw was meant to weigh down a sign or something in case of strong wind, but they're all over the place. Apparently, people put them out to keep cats away. The cats see their reflections on the side or something, and are freaked out, is what I was told. I think I remember reading or hearing about this somewhere else - pointing more towards cats' intense dislike of water, which makes more sense, though how full, sealed bottles are going to do the job is such a mystery that this must be crossing the line into superstition. Most of the bottles are a little too dirty to be reflecting much of anything, anyway. <br />
So why would cats be such an issue? Don't Japanese love cats? They star in almost as many cute photos and Youtube videos as rabbits, definitely. If not more. With pancakes and things on their heads.<br />
The internet proves that there are plenty of pampered house pets in Japan, but alongside that - I definitely noticed in the park in Tokyo where I would go running that there were what seemed like a lot of outdoor cats hanging around. Usually I saw them because they were being fed by people who were sitting at a little bit of a distance, as if the cats would be easily scared away. I was only in Tokyo for a week, though, so I didn't see all that much.<br />
The alley/street that my guest house in Osaka opens into has several hanging around all day. Normal, right? But then, down south a couple of miles in Nagai Kouen (Nagai Park), where I am going to try to run while I'm here... well, you know how in Boston we have squirrels? In Osaka, apparently, they have cats. I'm being completely serious. I saw several people feeding them while I was doing laps, but there were others, all over the place. Just hangin' out. <br />
I also noticed several tufts of sparrow feathers on the sidewalk that looked like they were not naturally shed. I bet there isn't much of a rat problem, though.<br />
<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-37604315600284403832012-05-20T06:40:00.000-07:002012-05-20T06:40:52.937-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-72481409972558195212012-05-20T06:32:00.000-07:002012-05-20T06:32:21.091-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-27762849776568468392012-05-19T05:38:00.001-07:002012-05-19T05:38:10.765-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcdXhSG3xQXYUkfGtHdlcztuU2dfva7tETm-PxVLh23pK2qqa9oYkHLSvPK8P5Oz-wAC3z0O8XhvaSHEkNpPGsBlDB-U7PnpFV-tt2_H-sg6SDbdkUFjBB2g0XQLV4mhqcv8kwjB9qgl9v/s1600/IMG_1182.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcdXhSG3xQXYUkfGtHdlcztuU2dfva7tETm-PxVLh23pK2qqa9oYkHLSvPK8P5Oz-wAC3z0O8XhvaSHEkNpPGsBlDB-U7PnpFV-tt2_H-sg6SDbdkUFjBB2g0XQLV4mhqcv8kwjB9qgl9v/s640/IMG_1182.JPG" width="640" /></a>dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-58119815789792765662012-05-18T04:13:00.001-07:002012-05-18T04:13:38.163-07:00so today i took the train over to a neighborhood called akihabara, which is famous for its electronic/otaku stuff. that means, well, you can guess i'm sure. the easiest way to tell the difference, from a distance, between the aisles full of manga for teenage girls and the aisles of manga for pervs is the particular shade of pink. the porn is a much lighter shade. although honestly i saw a lot of pretty suspect imagery on the shoujo covers as well.<br />
so watch out. there are multiple stores that have MULTIPLE FLOORS of manga. And then there are the ones that also have toys. And Then, there are the ones that sell used toys like an antique shop/flea market. I wish i could have taken photos in some of these places, but i'm sure i would have caused a scene. <br />
i spent way too much money on natsume merch and my pile of manga is getting taller... and i haven't even gotten to osaka yet. i have a few pictures, but for some reason this trip has been very un-photogenic so far. i think asakusa was just an easy target, and these neighborhoods are going to make me work for my pay.<br />
maybe the longer i'm here, the less conspicuous i'll feel, because i'm not a photographer- so blocking the sidewalk to take pictures just seems like such an obnoxious tourist move. i need to get over it.<br />
<br />
also experienced my first earthquake a couple of hours ago. it was over in less than half a minute and didn't actually seem very strong, but i was in my room and immediately started throwing all my valuable crap in my bag, about to run out the door when it stopped. the hotel owners said one of that level is a very common occurrence. it spurred a train of thought that is perfectly simple and pretty obvious, but which had never occurred to me before that moment - i can't really wrap my brain around how profoundly it must shape the development of a culture when the earth moves under their feet like a living thing, on a regular basis... never mind the actual disasters. we certainly don't have that going for us in the northeast. <br />
<br />
also, in most recent news/disappointment, a friend of mine from new york has been touring with his band (asobi seksu- the singer is japanese) and they just happen to be playing a show in shibuya right now. i mean that literally. i planned on going, but i thought it started later, so i totally missed my window. that is completely ridiculous, and it's completely like me to waste such an opportunity, isn't it? i was too busy sitting in a tiny cafe drinking a tiny cup of coffee, eating a very messy croissant, and studying to bother to come back to the hotel early and check the show times. oy vey. <br />
on that note, the oxford comma is dead! long live the oxford comma!dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-19488605598252539862012-05-17T00:47:00.000-07:002012-05-17T00:52:57.607-07:00<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">upstairs hallway in the ryokan</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">entrance </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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made it in one piece, everything's fine - my major first-world problem right now is that i'm surrounded by restaurants but i can't really afford to spend much on food. a medium coffee at the starbucks here is well over 4 dollars.
so i'm in more of a regular neighborhood this time rather than a world-famous temple, so good pictures aren't quite so easy to take. i need to get my photographer mojo going or something because there are good opportunities for photos here, but it's going to take a little more work than last time. also, this is not a very touristy destination so i feel like kind of a wanker taking pictures of everything. maybe when the jet lag subsides i can get my act together, because the few photos i've taken so far are pretty awful...dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-32668525917360879532012-05-13T22:21:00.000-07:002012-05-13T22:21:04.899-07:0036 days? ha! try 89!<br />
<br />
...honestly i'm feeling more than a little overwhelmed, anticipating this. it's mostly the plane, though. <br />
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wish me good wireless; will try to update from tokyo in a couple of days!dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1989279543768411998.post-49239741178132620742011-08-08T13:53:00.001-07:002011-08-08T14:50:25.269-07:00an offhand comment made by the person at MIT who i currently work for totally threw me off-balance for a minute today, but i'm fine. it's odd when you feel perfectly stable and on-course and then a thought is tossed like a wrench into the gears that forces you to check your position and think about what you've been thinking about.
<br />it was nothing really - a response to comments that i made about not having studied a lot of useful things back in school, like, say, physics. it was just that, and how i regret it, to an extent. i made a lot of bad decisions back then, fed by naivete and a serious lack of foresight. we all know this. i'm over it. i am also lucky enough to have found a career that i enjoy. so i'm not losing any sleep these days, fortunately. but he was under the impression that i considered myself in a temporary 'job', not yet neck-deep in my career, and suggested that if i was serious about working in construction (which i'm not- it was a misunderstanding) that i really needed to get into the carpenter's union. it was a perfectly good suggestion, if i were hoping to go in that direction, and considering his perspective being influenced by his own background and experience. it has actually already come up in the past with other furniture makers that i know, and i have already figured out that i do not, in fact, want to join the carpenter's union. with the economy being what it is, in most cases it would be a very sensible thing to do. i got my experience, however, working with and surrounded by people who have been running their own small businesses, on their own terms, and though that type of working situation is by no means a smooth ride, it has its own upsides and possibilities that the union may not.
<br />
<br />the point is that though i've been coming across more job opportunities than i have time for, the idea that i was potentially neglecting a major factor in the general sort of work that i do totally disoriented me for a few minutes, so that i actually had to step away from my own brain as much as possible and go over the things that i do and the choices i made, just to sort of take inventory and make sure i wasn't being a complete imbecile. i think it was partly because the idea of not being in the right place, itself, came from a person who is an integral part of the machine that is the school of architecture at MIT, which is naturally a great source of my recently acquired sense of financial stability. i was caught completely off guard and felt quite lost for a few minutes.
<br />fortunately, i have not been entirely stumbling along blindly, and was able to regain perspective so that the earth stopped shifting under my feet within five minutes. crisis averted, no major introspection necessary today, thanks though.
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<br />ugh.
<br />
<br />no real change with the pickle pots, so far. still very salty. i was away for a couple of days earlier this month, and had to put them in the fridge to hopefully forestall any going bad that might happen in the heat, and it seems to have worked, mostly - but since then, i've noticed a lot more gas production. if you have a solid ceramic or plastic bucket, you can't see through the sides, but since i'm using glass, i can clearly see all these little air pockets that open up between the daily stirs. it doesn't seem to be causing any problems, and the smell hasn't gone bad or changed, really, but it's still something... different. i have had a lot of green onions coming in my weekly csa pickups, so i tried halving a few of those and throwing them in - they were the first vegetables i was able to use and they tasted pretty good, actually. i did have to throw away a few of the outer layers, though, which had gotten overcooked and were kinda soggy. you really have to plan ahead with these things, since they definitely cross a line after a while - they're supposed to be softer and brighter in color, but only to a point. and once you take them out of the pot, they're only good for a short time. this is not something that streamlines well with the modern workaholic instant-gratification never-plan-ahead american lifestyle. fortunately, i think i can adapt.
<br />dirty birdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00797799984521368651noreply@blogger.com0