寒空と蜜柑の木

In case you missed the aforementioned Shizuoka Craft Fair and the featured music and food last weekend, here's the Tokyo band 青谷明日香 (Aoya Asuka), singing the song I have been obsessed with since I watched them perform it on Saturday. They were so kind that they were selling their CDs for only 500 yen each! The lead singer marketed the album thus: It's only one coin.
(There is a 500-yen coin.)

Craft fair on Aobadori (downtown Shiz) this weekend！！！

Get out here！

Flowers and people who love them

shop in Amsterdam (May 2008)



shop in Amsterdam (May 2008)



shop in Amsterdam (May 2008); I LOVE tulips



shop in Antwerp, Belgium (May 2008); obviously a boutique flower shop

Perhaps this was my mom's saying or it was the accumulation of feminist ideas, but I love flowers and don't need to wait until a man gives me a bouquet. I'm always drawn to flower shops, because they remind me of - obviously - nature, which is ruled by disorder. I bring this up because some flower shops actually resemble clothing boutiques or little shops selling cute little well-made things. Like the shop attached to perhaps the priciest hotel in Shizuoka, called Associa and located just outside Shizuoka JR Station. It's very well organized and scarcely stocked, obviously targeting the crowd that orders bouquets over the phone. And if you actually walk in and buy something, the staff looks somewhat shocked. Upon purchase, you aren't allowed to hold your stalk or bouquet. It's handed to you as you step outside the door. Strange.


flower shop next to Associa Hotel; stalks of cotton on the right

It was the only place I've been that sold stalks to cotton (each at 840 yen with tax). Mesmerized, I bought one. Now, it feels like winter, a dead stalk of cotton the centerpiece in my house. It's amazing.

For more down-to-earth flower shopping in Shizuoka:

-This little mom-n-pop shop sells fat bouquets of small roses for 100 yen, as well as a variety of very cheap fruits and vegetables.

-Somewhere around here is my go-to flower shop, selling a variety of flowers, and often featuring fruitful pepper plants outside, as well as other seasonal goodies.

-This is a very prominently located boutique-style shop that parades its goods near the sidewalk across from Starbucks. It's like a candy shop for the eyes, and I'm still kicking myself for not buying one of those fly-eating vase-shaped plants that was on sale for about 300 yen. This shop also sells a few trees, including at one time, notably, the Magic Fruit tree, the fruit of which make everything you eat taste sweet.

-This shop located across the street from Naganuma Station on the Shizutetsu line is stocked full of flowers, trees and chubby plants. I recall seeing an olive tree here once.

Beethoven in Shizuoka

I appreciate living and working in cities.

After work on a cold day in Shizuoka when I wish I wore a hat, I found myself listening to a piano and violin duet here, on the eighth floor above the central post office.

A day in a museum

window screen

Last week, a room in the school was converted into a gallery for about a week, where students from all three grades displayed their art. The gallery especially gave a chance for the art club to showcase their achievements, similarly to how tournaments allow sports teams to show their work.


topographical map


detail of a painting


teachers' portraits

I attribute the innovative concepts behind the artwork to the new art teacher (and, obviously, the students), who previously taught at a science museum.


Artwork ranged from handmade ukuleles with plastic strings; to portraits; to posters promoting tourism to Shizuoka; to well-known children's books rewritten in Japanese and English on sheets of paper, illustrated with drawings or prints, and bound.

The Reds Are Here!

There were matryoshkas and beautiful painted spoons in my Russian language classroom. I spoke Russian exclusively. We were one bottle short of a party.

At a seminar for Japan Exchange and Teaching program assistant teachers and Japanese teachers of English, I had the great fortune of teaching a 50-minute Russian language class. One of many classes on the schedule for the two-day event, mine was one of a series of Trading Places classes aimed at putting teachers in the shoes of their Japanese students. How does it feel to learn from a teacher who only speaks a foreign language?

I wasn't surprised that the participants in my class were bright, responding much more enthusiastically than my Japanese students ever do, even though previous knowledge of Russian is much more rare than previous knowledge of English. But then again, foreigners and Japanese teachers with international experience are already accustomed to international communication.

My preparing and teaching experience was touching and humbling; here I was trying to teach what I knew by heart, a language I assume to be one of the most complicated in the Western world, to people completely unfamiliar with it. Half way into the class, the students were greeting eachother and me in my first language. By the end, they were writing simple words. It's probably the most I've spoken Russian while in Japan, except on the phone with my parents.

Meg - my enthusiastic assistant and Japanese teacher of English - and I polish off a lesson plan in this highly staged photo.

heart, n.

2. kokoro 心 (seat of emotion). 3. jō 情 (sympathy) 4. yūki 勇気 (courage); yaruki やる気 (enthusiasm). 5. chūshin 中心 (central part).

Say someone committed suicide, hijacked a bus-full of people, or terrorized train passengers. Or say someone complains of an ongoing cold, for months, upon months upon months, missing time from work, obviously excusing larger ailments or mental issues. What's wrong with him? In response, people point to their chests, saying "It must be his heart."

In Japan, the Western concept of "mind" exists in the chest cavity, in the heart. It's a unique linguistic and philosophical difference.

Pull

koto players at the Edo Museum in Tokyo

The koto (琴) is the national instrument of Japan. It's a long wooden board, with 13 silk strings tied across the curved surface. It is placed on the lap or on the ground in front of the player, who is seated on his or her legs, with knees bent, and the strings are pulled with long fingernails or little attachments worn on the tips of the first three fingers of the right hand. The strings are tightened on 13 movable bridges, shaped like mini Eiffel Towers and traditionally carved out of ivory. The body of the instrument is made out of paulownia wood named for a Russian princess who was Queen of the Netherlands. It is also used to make traditional dressers given to married women by their parents after the wedding.

The dressers have become archaic, as families more and more frequently buy Western-style homes equipped with closets. So too the koto, which I played with the second-grade students in music class yesterday, was made with plastic bridges and synthetic strings. Koto playing is mainly a hobby in modern Japan, but it once was a career.

I learned to play a simple version of the famous old Japanese song "Sakura Sakura" (referring to cherry blossoms, the national flowers of Japan). Listen to a recording of the song on the Wikipedia page for the instrument. The music was written right to left, from up to down, in Chinese characters representing the numbers of the strings I had to pull to produce each note.

It begins: 七 七 八　七 七 八　七 八 九 八 七 八七六

Reports of risque and bizarre vending machines selling things like used underwear may be grossly exaggerated, but once in a while, I'll turn a corner and be genuinely surprised. Above is a machine selling 5 and 10 kilogram bags of rice, located south of Yunoki train station. Talk about convenience!

There are vending machines selling milk, yogurt, hot meals, hair brushes and (clean) underwear, but those are usually not just located on the street, but instead in places like spas where a woman may need a shaving kit or a cold milk after a soak (cold milk and beer are post-soak drinks of choice). People buy cheap hot meals from vending machines located at rest stops along the road. But most neighborhood machines sell only the usual: cold and hot soft drinks and coffee, cigarettes, and occasionally alcohol.

Selling it out on the corner

Old man selling sweet potatoes baked right in his truck at the red-light district in downtown Shizuoka; four for 1000 yen. At a nearby park, people set up ramen shops, also out of their trucks. It's food for the drunk and those keeping warm. I haven't had the chance yet to try it, because I rarely head to the red-light district while hungry.

Shizuoka has a very prominent red-light district in downtown, where Chinese middlewomen standing on corners solicit drunk men into gentlemen's clubs and hostess bars. Prostitution outright is illegal, but it isn't illegal to pay for the company of a woman at a bar, then to take her out shopping and maybe more outside of working hours. Owners prefer that their girls become sorts of girlfriends, because it'll keep their sugar daddies coming back to the businesses.

Male hosts also solicit their services, looking like a bunch of anime characters in suits with overdone stick-straight hair. And the female hosts appear come night time, on trains or on the sidewalks, heading into the district, often with extension-clad blond and red done-up hair, high heels, short skirts, and sometimes even sunglasses at night.

Advertisements outside some racier hangouts include suggestive photos of women pushing their breasts at the camera, having sex, or dressed in school-girl uniforms. The district is located almost exactly downtown, parallel to the main shopping street, interspersed with good and bad restaurants, clubs and karaoke businesses. At least two flower shops stay open late, as well as convenience stores and clothing shops selling gaudy hostess dresses. There's no shame in this peculiar game.

Last time I taught at an elementary school, I brought my matryoshka doll along to introduce the country where I was born. The kids found it unbelievable that the thing opened at all, and completely absurd that the largest doll contained five smaller dolls inside. They absolutely loved it.

For today's visit to an elementary school out in the country side, I'll probably end up doing a Cossack dance because I forgot to bring along the doll, sadly.

Ask me about my compost piles

So I got this hoarding habit, or perhaps problem. I stash and stash, and hide the goods in my plants out back. It's a pulpy mess out there on the ledge of the balcony, but I just can't stop! The stuff I hoard is just a mess, a reeking pile of garbage really. And yet I keep hoarding, keep burying it out back like a dog, because I know that one day, something beautiful will happen; my compost piles will sprout mysterious-to-me leaves and stalks.

The lush greenery at the foreground of this photo is an example of the mysterious something growing from what was originally designated as a planter for chives and shiso. I covered the scraps from cooking in the background with more dirt after taking this picture.

A couple months ago, I visited my friends in Chiba and watched curiously when they would bring leaves, seeds, peels, whatever and bury them in their planters, which already were growing thick with a disorder of mysterious greenery. What do you plant, I asked? Everything, answered Damien. When we have seeds and pulp left over from cutting tomatoes, we plant those, he said. Watermelon cores, roots, lettuce. Melon seeds were exceptionally genki sprouters that shot up from the pot in no time, he said. My watermelon seeds were just as happy to open up.

So upon returning home, I found plastic containers I hadn't thrown out yet and stuffed them full of vegetable and fruit remains, paper from egg cartons, and dirt. Probably more than 60% of my fruit and vegetable scraps, as well as mushrooms and eggs, goes into the planters, which is significant, because I mostly consume fresh produce, not prepackaged foods. That means taking out the trash less frequently, reusing the waste I do produce, and growing a cornucopia of weirdness on the balcony. Of course I've always been fascinated by plants and biology, so to me, it's like watching a nature special every time I look out at my balcony.

Once, I watched a TV special about a house that also had an interesting waste-management system. The "sink" in the kitchen was actually a small pond for koi (Japanese carp), where the owners washed their produce. Koi feed on refuse, so feeding fish while feeding yourself seems like a nice arrangement.

I think the wildlife enjoys my garden too. Yesterday while inspecting my planters, I noticed a spot of earth moving in one. I thought I was hallucinating, but I saw it move again. I dug in to pull out a thicky slimy maggot or perhaps catterpillar or pupae rolled into a ball. Creeped out, I put my friend back in his home and covered him with a new layer of my precious garbage.

Note: I heard that onions don't make good composting material, and neither do fatty foods so don't throw last night's curry in the mix. Stick to fruits, vegetables, roots, egg shells and mushrooms.

Runners

Avi Gerver for The New York Times

MILES FROM HOME

Michel Bach of Pomponne, France, guess who, in New York's marathon.

Caption made me laugh. Full NYT story on slow runners here.

Sunday I'll be running the "Ikawa Marathon," which features very un-marathon-like distances of 2.5K, 5K, 10K and 20K. I'll be doing the 5K because I've stopped running competitively since I had to run the mile in a race in 5th grade. Not ever having run a mile before that, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I was gasping for breath within the first minute and crying as I finished dead-last, having already given up on the run and walking the whole way.

It's fascinating how big marathon running is; just among the small foreigner population I know in Shizuoka alone, there are seven people I can think of at this moment who are training or have trained for marathons.

Springtime in October

(Springtime in Shizuoka)





(Springtime in Fantasia 2000)

Do you see it? Huh?

The Main Event

This is a scene from Monday afternoon, the third day of the World Cup Daidogei or International Street Performance Festival in Shizuoka. Musicians, athletes and clowns, alongside street food vendors have filled Sumpu Park (the central park of Shizuoka City) as well as Gofukocho, the main shopping street.

What makes this festival extra special - besides that it celebrates the art of art, strength, humor, and intrigue - is that it falls on the weekend around Halloween, so when I was decked out as Spring from Fantasia 2000 (picture to come) on the night before Halloween, passers-by didn't know whether I was a performer ... or a freak (Halloween isn't widely celebrated here).

Last year, I met a German juggler and Russian acrobats. Today, I watched this Japanese marching band playing Disney tunes on saxophones and drums outside Starbucks, teen acrobats from Shanghai balancing tableware under the watchful eyes of their adult supervisors, and two French street performers acting like a frazzled couple while having an argument in the street (or maybe they were just a French couple mid argument, and we were laughing at their misfortunes).

Yesterday, there was a pair Australian strongmen wearing only briefs and tossing each other around, and a European woman imitating deep-water diving while suspended on ropes from a crane. There were two Canadian women on the main shopping street painting stunning multi-colored face designs.

Japanese and foreigners swarm the events, which is notable because street performance is, like Halloween, not wide-spread here. Not even the homeless beg for money. But once a year, performers from around the world whip out hats and bags and ask for the people's yen, as well as for their participation in their acts. It's bizarre and unnerving to watch the generally shy Japanese at times barely responding to the humorous prodding of the performers. But most do open their wallets and give.

It's fantastic to feel like I live in one giant circus for a couple days every year.