Departure

Now is the time of the great leaving. This semester has gone by faster than any other one I've experienced. I have just turned in my bedding and have everything packed except for my laptop. I will be in Tokyo by tomorrow morning, and hopefully the bus ride goes smoothly.
Sayonara AIU.

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Commence Last Minute Panicking

The end of the semester has come, and its accompanying papers. I must well and truly admit that I am the Queen of Procrastination for lo I have but two days left to finish two papers. Neither of them are exceptionally difficult, it just means I must sit down and do them. Strangely my paper for anime class is going to be more difficult, I haven't much experience writing scholarly papers about film and a bit clumsy with my citations. However the topic, Cowboy Bebop, is one I like and I think that the fatalistic nature of the show will be easy enough for me to isolate, since I did that sort of thing for a couple of English papers before. I like Cowboy Bebop, and I find it exceptionally interesting that the heroes are so rarely shown as truly successful at their chosen endeavor. It is the second favorite anime in the US after Evangelion, but in Japan it ranks fairly low, it almost didn't make it on air.

I was being struck quite forcefully with panic this evening, I'm not ready to leave AIU. I would like to stay longer and am going to miss it, and of course Japan in general. I tell myself that there are good things waiting for me back in Albuquerque, I got accepted to teach my class and I'm going to get to do the Beowulf translation class, but I really am not ready to leave Japan. I know I have two more weeks here seeing all of the great sights, but it doesn't seem like enough. I'm really glad I just arbitrarily decided to make my return ticket for the 9th, while I don't like worrying about the logistics of traveling, I'm really happy to be doing it.

I am going to miss all of the little things, like my roommate. I really like Ayaka, but we don't really talk all that much. Living in such a small space it seems very important to keep boundaries and I don't like bothering her when she is trying to do school work. When we do have conversations it's kind of awkward because when it ends, or trails off, we are still in the same room and simply resurrecting the mental barriers. I can't really remember what it was like for me with my roommates when I lived in the dorms, but somehow it didn't seem so awkward. Maybe it's the fact that when we converse we both need to be paying full attention because of the foreign language utilization aspect. I will try to keep in touch with her via email once I go, as with my conversation partner, and hopefully the AIU students who will be in Abq will contact me. I like this nice little community of a school, even though it is frustrating at times.
Anyway I should go back to paper writing. Oyasumi

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Japanese Cakes Make Me Happier

This cake was one of the most delicious I've ever had, chocolate cake, chocolate ganache, vaguely strawberry flavored fluffy frosting, mixed crushed nut crust at the bottom, topped with chestnut goo and a chestnut. However this wasn't the one I ate tonight, I sadly didn't have my camera with me and I ate it in the shop at one of their cute little tables with my friends. Tonight's cake was amazing as well: very moist matcha flavored green cake, filled with bright green matcha fluff and a little bit of cake hiding in the center, and topped with chestnut goo mounded in a way that vaguely resembles noodles. There were many other tempting chocolate choices, but I decided that I should go with the special Japanese flavors that I know I'm going to miss.

Hmm methinks this sounds a bit food obsessed...
But I do so love a good dessert, better even than the most succulent piece of meat.

School has been very school-like and therefore I am learning, but not really doing anything too exciting. In order to be done with this semester I still need to participate in a final for Japanese Business Culture, do a presentation for the same on Monday, do a final for Shodo which will be most mystifying I am sure since I am not even very sure which style we practiced was which, write a 3,000 plus word essay for anime class, a 5-6 page paper summing up what I have learned about nihonjinron and Multiethnic Japan, and a take home final for US Social Problems. Joy.

I'm feeling very stressed out about getting all of my stuff home again safely, especially any fragile things I might send. I have a lot of manga, papers, and books that I need to send home via surface mail, but that means acquiring a big box and mailing it. I did see a hard sided piece of rolling luggage bigger than anything I own at home which could transport my fragile things more easily than me attempting to carry them, but I'm not sure if I should spend $100 just to be able to carry more junk. I am beginning to worry about getting presents for everyone and figuring about how to get them home, oh how I loathe dealing with logistics. Nevertheless there are many people who deserve something really cool from Japan, so anyone reading this should let me know what you would most enjoy, or at least what type of thing (book, cloth, ceramic, toy, etc...) so that I can make a guess.

I'm really looking forward to the end of school because I am going back to Tokyo for almost a week, then it is off to Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka, then back to Tokyo again to fly home. I'm really glad that I'm going with Steven, he got me to start making plans way in advance so now I'm not worried about logistics, all I have to think about is getting the right trains to Kyoto and what I want to do with myself once the destination is achieved. It's going to be crazy crowded in Kyoto because of New Years and everyone will be going to the temples. I plan to definitely go to Fushimi Inari, which is a Shinto place with tori lining the path up and around the hill and it's also a fox shrine. I hope for some really good pictures since it seems so cool, but there will probably be lots of people in them.

I haven't given up on Ikebana yet, I seem to be doing OK at it once I know how it is supposed to look. Although this view from above does not allow one to appreciate the nice curves of my branches, it's very hard to get the whole thing in the picture without having lots of other junk too. I'm pleased that Abe-sensei only rearranged my speckly green leaves and the fluffy pine sprigs, which I had no real idea of what to do with anyways. I realize that by showing this view, I can however explain the concept of this type of arrangement. There are always 3 main parts to basic arrangements, and one always goes towards the back and very straight. For this layout, since the main long bits are nice bendy willow, it called for a curving of the branches to make them more beautiful. The 2nd main bit of the arrangement is the biggest branch on the left, and the idea was to bend it so that it crosses the 1st branch. Finally there is the 3rd which always off-sets the other two, and is "very coming forward" in the words of Abe-sensei. Then the remaining branches are placed to compliment the main ones, bending in the same direction but positioned so that the don't occlude any other branch. I was lucky this time and all of my branches were fairly regularly shaped and therefore easier to reshape properly rather than being stubborn and going off at odd unchangeable angles as has been the case in the past. The flowers are added after the main bits, and there is usually a gradation in size and type which makes it easier to decide how they should be placed. The purple ones smelled faintly pleasant, and were also large, sturdy, and one was bigger than the other, so it was easy to chose which to make taller. The idea for the tapered sturdy flowers they go in towards the back and are taller than the other flowers. Any other flowers are usually the kind with individualized blooms, so those are placed in the middle, front and center for attention, but of course shorter than the ones in back. The rest of the vegetation is added to balance it out and hide the kenzan (prickly, heavy metal thing the flowers are stuck on), and always they must be placed with the idea that they are facing towards the sun, which is above and to the right of the viewer.
And that is the basic how-to of ikebana, see I have learned a Japanese art, albeit in no great depth. I am going to miss ikebana club time because it was very soothing to just sit around and think about how best to arrange flowers according to their natural abilities and the prescription of the model. I'm thinking about bringing a kenzan home with me so I can gather plants and arrange them, I only really need one or two flowers to make an arrangement.

I feel better now, having written a little. Now for some photos from the mildly foolish trip to Sendai, learned a lesson about making hotel reservation in advance and also that internet cafes are the place to go when you have no where to sleep at night.
This was taken from the window of the Shinkansen, which actually only got us there in an hour's less time than taking the bus would have, because it stopped a lot along the way, but still, I have experienced it and its eerie quietness.
He rings the little hand bell but he does not go "Ho Ho Ho"
I love Gundams... that's why I played the Gundam game in the arcade. You are in a big plastic cockpit with an adjustable seat and head set, and you pilot your gundam with a joystick, I guess that would be the best description for them, in each hand and two foot pedals. The screen is huge and wraps around the pod, and there are things to make the cockpit shake with you get hit. It was truly amazing to experience, and made me wish I had better honed video game hand-eye coordination skills so that I could destroy multitudinous Feddies with my Zaku, however such is not my destiny.
Just in case you had forgotten how weird Japan is... these are Dollfies and very expensive, totally customizable with a wide assortment of premade costumes available, but instead people in this store decided they wanted a Dollfie sumo display. Professor Ashmore led us to this shop because it is the closest place shy of Tokyo to get Dollfies and accessories. He was having one built with little fin ears and white hair , I thought it was going to be a weird little mermaid, but no he says she is supposed to be a vampire girl that his girlfriend wanted. I liked the store because there were lots of really cool models and figurines. They were all way more than I would ever pay for a thing like that, but there were some that I would definitely buy if I could find them used somewhere, which is entirely possible since I'll be in Tokyo for a while. I will definitely enjoy assembling the Deathscythe Gundam I got at Mangasoko.This reminds me of a fetish, and its buddies were all carved in a similar style. This is outside of the VERY CLOSED visitor center for Akiu, the hotsprings area we arrived at at 9 am after spending the night in a karaoke booth in Sendai. All I wanted was to fall immediately into a nice bath, but ooohhh no, none of the baths opened until 11am.We stopped in possibly the fanciest hotel I've been in, except for maybe, maybe,the hotel that Mama and I took tea in in London.There was a wrap-around stream-like koi pond inside seperating the main lobby from the slightly raised railed deck, I say deck because it was wooden floored and reminded me of an old-fashioned cruise ship where the wealthy sat in plush chairs around little tabes to take tea, were they served tea, coffee and cakes only. My tea was Assam that was supposedly exclusively for the hotel, and it was topped with a dense layer of frothy, sweetened, matcha-flavored cream. It was amazing, and even more so since the only thing to pass my lips since 6am was cold, cold water and it was not a warm morning. There was even a small gallery, with a sign that explained that a shogun had been cured of arthritis by water from here, so this hotel was quite old and revered indeed, and also had a standard on display that had been taken into so 18th century battle in the area.These images are all from the above mentioned hotel, and its beautiful, inaccessible inner courtyard.
I'm also excited about going home and resuming my former existence with a new flair, or at least a better understanding of the world at large. Also I'm quite excited about the prospects of preparing to co-teach an Honor's class next Fall, keeping my fingers crossed that our course gets approved, and then doing the Eastern Legacy trip to India in the summer! ...just to make sure you understand= !!! I am going to get myself a cute little planner, maybe a Totoro one, while I'm still here and make a resolution to use it this year to be as productive as possible with the time I have.

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Nighttime Noodling

I have been to no fewer than three sake breweries under school auspices now. The field trip today was to Ryozeki brewery in Yuzawa. It snowed the whole way there and I got to watch the countryside become more and more frosted as we drove. Midway through the drive there I realized that the bus was going very slow, and looking at the roads I thought for sure we would have to turn around. But no, apparently this was rather average winter driving conditions and our driver pressed on.

This was definitely the most educational trip to a brewery, the last one's main source of information was a video in Japanese about the process, and the first one was also mostly about the process but without really getting into the reasons for why things are done the way they are.
For instance, I learned that in the north of Japan, where it is naturally colder, the yeast from the koji grows more slowly because of the temperature and therefore fermentation takes longer and more of the rice is dissolved, making for a sweeter product. In the south fermentation takes only 15 days, it's usually around 25 up here, and the sake is dryer. According to the fellow giving the tour, his English was very good but I think he was nervous because he talked very quickly, the difference in flavors is well suited to the regional preferences. In the south lighter flavors and meals are nicely complimented by the dry sake, and in the north the preference for stronger flavors makes sweet sake more popular. Modern climate controls make it possible to produce either type of sake now, so Ryozeki produces dry sake to be sold in the south. Up here pickles are more popular and some are made with the rice cakes leftover after the sake is strained and pressed- they put either eggplant or ... he gave one other example but I seem to have forgotten it, but I have seen pickles made out of all kinds of things- anyway the item to be pickled is placed in the center of a rice cake and the leftover alcohol goes to work.

Another amusing tidbit is that when the governmental revenue service would come to do inspections, the president of the company would let the inspector "sample" the sake until he was fairly drunk, and then offer to let him go into the warehouse, maybe it was a grain storage area, to make sure they had made truthful reports, but the stair to reach it was too steep and narrow for someone who had been drinking. The president/owner of this brewery, like many of the other breweries in the north, was a major landowner. This worked out because a landowner would have large quantities of rice to sell, but if it couldn't all be sold it couldn't be let go to waste, so they made it into sake. In the south the owners of breweries were usually people who were in the shipping business, since for them the goal was to get the sake to Edo for sale, and they were the wealthiest and would have best access to rice because of their transportation.

These are all pictures from Monday, I think I had some good ones. The snow was melted yesterday by the rain, but today more fell, just not as much stuck. On the highway there are signs that tell the temperature and it was 0 degrees C at 4pm heading south and inland. They also have these barriers along the roads that have segmented metal screen things to stop snow from drifting onto the road, today I saw the screens being cranked up in preparation for winter.

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Change of Season

I had been speculating for the past few days that it would snow for real sometime soon, since it did for two minutes on Friday. Yesterday afternoon the snow began drifting down, but it wasn't cold enough to stick. In the morning I had gone for a pleasant walk in the misty rain, enjoying the moist late fall scenery. This morning I shuffled down to breakfast because it was milk day and was greeted by a winter wonderland and more people up and moving around than I've seen before. I was disappointed to discover that the hellish warmth that had usually characterized the cafeteria in the morning was no longer present. Maybe too many people were going in and out of the one window-like door that connects the cafeteria to the outside...

Anyway I didn't really think I would wind up going for a walk this morning, but I decided to put on my boots and jacket and take a few pictures, after I got the guy at the desk to let me into my room since I was locked out once more because I hadn't put on the right pair of pants with keys in them to go down to breakfast. Once I was outside I decided to go see if anyone had ventured into the woods yet. I was the first, so the lure of fresh perfectly undisturbed snow in an empty forest overcame the desire to go back inside.
It was magically quiet in the woods, just the sound of falling snow and the occasional small bird zipping around. I really did feel like I was walking in a winter wonderland. The clearing that just yesterday was densely carpeted in moss was now covered in a few inches of snow.

I think this hat is a little too small for my head since it didn't keep my ears warm at all, it just kept rolling up over them. My hair is mostly this weird fuscia color... I should redye it, or something. I kind of want a cool Japanese hair cut, but it would be expensive, and kind of a waste if I just do it with my patchy hair, plus I have no idea what kind of style would work out well with my hair, since it can't do some of the things that the people here manage since theirs is so thick.

The way I have been and the way I'm going. Philosophical, ne?

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Natsukashi Fall

On Sunday we went to Oyasukyo, which is a lovely gorge in the south of the prefecture where there are natural hot springs. The hot water bubbles out of splits in the rock at about 98degrees Celsius. In other cracks along the walkway it was a mist or a dribble with lots of hissing and spitting and reeking of sulfur. At one point there is a huge cloud of the steam to be walked through and it fogged my glasses up completely. There had been a mudslide recently so part of the trail was closed and visitors had to descend and ascend along the same trail, instead of being able to walk along the bottom of the gorge.
This apparently a very popular place to visit because it was quite crowded with people, even old people climbed the 60m of rather steep stairs up and down. Of course that made it rather difficult for me to get good, unoccupied pictures of the place, so here are some good ones that were small details.
I liked the leaves swirling down to the bottom like snow, the picture doesn't do the scene justice.



These were taken from the red iron bridge that spanned the gorge.
These two are to give a sense of where I was at the bottom, you can see the path and the billows of steam if you look closely. I don't think they are particularly good, but it shows looking over the edge of the bridge and the looking directly ahead to the north, I think.The point of this field trip was to see the fall colors, which we did. However it also showed me the merciless way the Japanese cut down swaths of their forest and the replant with only one kind of tree. Look below at the green cedars. They are all over the place in Akita, if not completely covering a hill, then marking very clearly where the straight lines of the clear cutting stopped. This cedar is a local tree and a cartoon version is the perfectural mascot, it really weirded me out when I first saw one. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but when I stayed at Plaza Krypton they had some trees directly in front of the huge lobby windows facing the hill that somehow had cartoon eyes and a big red smile stuck to them. For the sports festival the had the tree in all manner of sports, even carrying a rifle for marksmanship or wearing a gi for martial arts competitions.
We also went to a theme park called Akita Furusato Village, it was... not what we think of as a theme park, but that's what it was. There were regional arts and crafts, displayed in a museum setting as well as vendors where you could buy such things. There was a "Wonder Castle," a modern art museum with local artists, a planetarium, and other things to amuse young and old.
I had fun, but would definitely not pay money to go there again.

That's all for now.

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Long Cold Weekend

Well the festival is over and fall is officially here now. The leaves have started to turn and it was cold, windy, and rainy for the weekend. Now, of course, the weather is rather sunny and pleasant, if a bit cool.I didn't take many good pictures from the festival, I just couldn't seem to get my camera on a good setting and there was always lots of people moving around making it harder. This is a shot of the food stalls set up in front of where they are building the new library. The school has many plans for new buildings, this summer they finished a new dormitory and I'm not sure what they're going to do after the library is done, but I've seen models in the Administration building.
This is a shot of my dormitory on the left and the cafeteria on the right, everyone is watching the stage on the other side of the lawn. They were have some sort of comedy competition, but I of course had no idea what was being said, so I don't get to find out what passes for local humor.

The festival was nice, there were some surprisingly good musical acts that I saw on the second day, since everything was stopped early on the first day because of rain and wind. My friend Rikako performed a number of songs with various instruments and even a duet by Jack Johnson, she sang it with one of the American guys and they sounded lovely. I had been told that she sings well, but this weekend was the first chance I've had to hear her sing. I made some videos of her singing, but most of the pictures I took came out badly because of low lighting and movement.
This would be the international student ikebana efforts, mine is the one in front. Each does look a little different from the others... a little. This was made by my suite-mate Yurina and she is very good at it, she gets to display her work at the airport.This one was done by Abe Sensei. Witness the three pointed shape of the arrangement, this is the fundamental aspect of ikebana forms which the rest of the flowers are arranged around.

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