Takatori Yama

A couple of weeks ago (if you've been following, I went on three or four hikes last week- that's why the last few entries all start similarly), I went with Takahashi-san's and Murata-san's group from city hall. They're the ones that like to get dirty and splash about in local rivers and along the seashore checking the quality of the water. I just can't imagine the group from my other three hikes getting too dirty.

Our destination was Takatori Yama (Hawk Mountain). It turned out that I only saw pigeons up there. Proud of my Japanese, I told the guy next to me that maybe it needed a new name, Pigeon Mountain. He wasn't impressed.

As usual, we stopped at a few points along the route to check out the water. If there's any fence jumping and bridge diving to do, Takahashi-san is our man!

Takahashi-san, at it again.

It's not quite like the floating huts I've seen on TV in Vietnam or China, but I wonder what it's like to live over this small river. During summer, I bet the bugs are terrible. Also, I can't help but suspect sewer somehow ends up here.

As usual, this hike had its adventurous moments. I think these moments are the most heartracing for me. I have all these grandparents scuttling around on rocks and I'm just waiting for one of them to fall and break a hip. It's very stressful! I bet their kids don't even know what they're up to.

There was a water tank at one of our little summits. It had this teensy lock on the gate and this warning for potential terrorists. I feel safer. That's why I only drink sake!

Here's the view would-be terrorists would have after being deterred.

(Folks, I'm not making light of the terrorist threat. I'm only making light of the light precautions that are in effect.)

I was walking down the trail when I heard Takahashi-san yelling, "Jory-san! Jory-san!" He was pointing around the corner of the big cliff I just rounded. Suddenly seeing the giant figure of a person startled me and the rest of the crowd had a good chuckle.

The lady on the right is the one that is bowing in the picture, above. She also tried to adopt me for the day, on a couple of occasions. She was really nice but I avoided her a little bit. I simply couldn't understand anything she said. And one time, she went on and on.

There was a spacious clearing near the summit of the mountain. Near the middle of it was a big rock. That's were we took our lunch break. That's Takahashi-san on the rock playing Lion King. He has to make sure we are all accounted for.

At the summit, there was a little observation tower. Here's the view down on our lunch rock.

This view from the observation tower shows the big Buddha. Can you find it?

How about now?

On the side of the mountain is a famous temple. It's nestled in a small valley and the access to it seems to be carved between these two rocks. It had a very private feel to it.

We were milling around, admiring the scenery, when the head priest opened his door and invited our entire group to come inside. Apparently, this was our good fortune. More than a few people passed me saying "Our good lucky!" We were then treated to a 30 minute speech on the history of the temple. Needless to say, I didn't understand a word. People are always telling me, "I bet your Japanese is getting better!" Yes and no. Yes, if you'd like me to order some food for you- no problem. I can even get us on the right bus or train. I can even talk a little sword or weather. But, I cannot discuss the history of Buddhist temples. Instead, I played a little game in my head. There was about twenty of us inside the temple. Half of us are sitting in seiza (how Japanese people sit). Even for most Japanese, sitting like this for an extended period of time becomes excruciatingly painful. I took it upon myself, to be the last holdout. I pitted myself against some veterans of the game. One by one, a lady over there would change positions. Next, the man in front of me changed to "Indian style." Finally, it was down to the last three. I couldn't even feel my legs. That's not true. I could feel they were still there because they were hurting. Suddenly, the priest concluded his story and invited us to come "behind the curtains" so to speak and look at all the artifacts up close. That was really cool, except I couldn't stand. Long after everyone else was up and about, I was finally able to shuffle forward. A few of the grandmothers asked if I was OK.

Deep in the Heart of Tokyo

Two Sundays ago, the J-folks treated us to a concert. We all flew to Dallas for an afternoon of country music. Not really. We actually headed to the 11th Annual Lonestar Picnic, in the Tokyo suburb of Tokorozawa.

It was a pretty entertaining day. I'd say the place to get into the country music scene is in Japan. As long as the music is close, you don't really need to have the lyrics down.

Here's a picture of the headliner: J.T. Kinehara. He almost looks just like George Strait. He really wasn't that bad and I have a copy of the CD he recorded in Nashville. It has one his own songs, She Called Me Japanese Willie.

However, this fella here was the closest thing to a Japanese Willie at the show. He even sang The City of New Orleans. I seemed to be the only one in the crowd that knew this tune. I don't think most Japanese country music fans stray too far from whatever's new and current. He's also the only act that had a harmonica.

Here's a picture of the Wildwood Roses. They were a pretty big hit, as the dance area quickly filled when they started singing. This is a shot of her doing some kind of Shania Twain thang.

I tried to use the digital zoom and get a closer look at her Twain thang, but only managed to get a shot of J-Pop. By the look on his face and the body language of the other two guys, I'm guessing her Twain thang was close enough to the real deal!

They are probably dancing to lines like "I'm fwom the countwy and I wike it that way," or "God [bwey] the day I discover you..." But the music was spot on. It was kind of strange. If you didn't really look at anybody, but just scan the crowd, it looked like any group of Native Americans or Hispanics, in Oklahoma, having a hoedown.

Apparently, this hipster's image of "western attire" is something different. It might be how they're dressing in west Harajuku. Incidentally, his group had the loudest whoopers and hollerers. They were also drinking the most.

These guys know exactly how real cowboys are expected to dress. The American flag guy had on Ol' Glory sunglasses and earrings. He was quite the glamourboy. The other one is just your regular rodeoer. I saw a couple of guys with what looked like cans of Skoal in their back pockets.

Here's J-Ma and Pa getting jiggy with it.

A little rodeo clown.

J-Ma going solo.

One of the three members of the "Wake Up Tulsa" dancing club. A lot of gangs were wearing their "colors."

J-Ma still going solo.

A Man in Black (he looked like a Japanese Lee Van Cleef) offering "Willie" some firewater, while an A's fan looks on.

This cowpoke was pretty drunk. He sat down behind me and gave me a shoulder massage for about 5 minutes. He kept yanking back and hugging me. He announced a few times that I was his new American friend. The people with whom he shared didn't seem to care. He had some basic English, because he works on a U.S. base. He made his kids come down and say "Hello" and "Nice to meet you." They later came back down to give me a rice cracker. His wife seemed like a good hearted woman that fell in love with a good timin' man.

Here we are! I'm wearing the only western shirt that I brought to Japan. She's representing, by wearing a ballcap with the face of OSU's Pistol Pete on it (At least Oklahoma was represented in Longhorn territory).

How does your garden grow?

If it's like mine, it grows by a couple of styrofoam boxes from the fish market, every couple of days.

As with most people, there is a strong tradition of growing a garden in my family. It doesn't have to be a sprawling acreage (though some in my family have had just that). It can be just one little patch of something. Anything will do, as long as it's edible (or at least the picture on the package of seeds, of what was supposed to grow, is edible).

This is the area of the yard that is now mine. It was pretty weedy until I decided to have a garden. Jpop was going to just spray the ground with weed killer. While he likes trees, bushes, and flowers, he seems to have a healthy disdain for grass. I'm not sure what the big deal is. Even if there was grass, it's not like it would take all of ten minutes, or less, to keep it trimmed (Today, I weedeated the grass that does grow and it took about 3 minutes).

Here's J-Mom putting out ant poison. Sometimes, the little tasks I do, domino into little tasks for them. This time, I uncovered some ants when I did some yard cleaning. She decided it was a problem. I'm not really sure what harm they were doing in the yard. I guess, ants are to Jmom, as grass is to Jpop. She's smiling, because she thinks I sneak around and take pictures of them doing weird things, to post on my blog. She's thought that ever since that early early post of mine, that shows Jpop sleeping under the coffee table. She tells all her friends that she has to always make sure she's wearing makeup, because she might end up on the internet.

We decided to plant a small garden. It was sparked by noticing some tomato plants on sale at the neighborhood market. We bought three tomato plants and two cucumber plants. I found a couple of old styrofoam boxes and began my garden.

The next day, J-Pop got wind of a garden in his yard. It turns out, that they love having a garden. They just never have the time to work it. What with their full time jobs and afterhours country dancing, I can understand that. They whisked me away to the Japanese version of Lowe's (D2) and we picked up some more potting soil, two more tomatoes, and some kind of red pepper things, and a couple of eggplants. Upon returning, Jpop showed me where all the yard tools are stored. He then disappeared into the garage to return with three more empty styrofoam boxes.

I made one more trip, a few days later to a different supermarket and picked up some sick looking eggplant and some green, red, and yellow peppers. I filled up the rest of my remaining spaces and put the sickly eggplants in their own pots.

A lot of people, away from home, look up at the stars or moon at night, and are comforted by the fact that their loved ones can look at that same moon, on the other side of the world. I found a different way. By working in my garden, however small it is, I can see my Dad. As it turns out, I spend a lot of time out there.

These rubber tabi boots are the most comfortable yard shoes, I've ever worn.

Jpop doing some yardwork on a different day. He can stand on top of a rickety 6' stepladder and the thing doesn't even shake. He stood up there and with an electric, telescoping hedgetrimmer, flattened out the tops of his trees. He could bend over, lean out, turn around, anything, and the ladder wouldn't move. As unimpressed as you are right now, go out and stand on the top step of one. If you can mimic his catlike agility, take a picture. I want to see it.

The Old Man and the Seaweed

Last week, I went on two hikes with the same group. The first hike was to teach us (us, being limited to those fluent in Japanese) what seaside plants are edible. The second hike was just a flower identification hike. Again, for me, they were just a couple of chances to stroll about and have a picnic with a group of elderly strangers. The group leader was the same for both hikes. To be fair, I'll admit that Noriko went with me on the first one. She was going to take notes so we could investigate the plants at our convenience. Below, are some shots from those two days.

From the second hike. There were pools of water, everywhere. The rocky area here is underwater during high tide.

That white building is somebody's seaside house. We walked by it later. They have a really nice view from their back porch.

Seaside View of Tokyo Bay

Navigating the rock path.

Our plant sensei is some kind of professor. He apparently knows a lot. He's also pretty funny. I guess. He usually had some extra info to impart and when he was done, everyone would laugh. Except for me. Sometimes I laughed, but it was usually at something else.

Here's another view across Tokyo Bay. Those mountains across the way are in Chiba.

Plant: Some kind of pine tree? I heard the word 'matsu.' I know a guy named Matsushima and the first part of his name means pine tree.

A man drying out wakame seaweed. All along this part were little piles of seaweed.

I had this bright idea to take a picture of all the edible plants and create a photo log.

As our walk sped up and the pictures proved too difficult to take with my camera...

...also, I was preoccupied with trying to take pictures of butterflies.

This man spoke English, rather well, considering he was 70ish and hadn't studied English since high school. He kind of wandered around and did his own thing (like me). Maybe he wasn't even Japanese! For the second walk, I was adopted by him. I like the beach towel, hanging up: Looking for the lost rhythm (or something).


Here's our sensei explaining something. I actually understood this time. On our previous hike, we harvested the root of this plant (hama daikon). It's called that, because you can prepare the root, similar to how you'd prepare an actual daikon (big white Japanese radish). After our edible plant hike, we went back to an Uraga City building and prepared some of our wild edibles for lunch.

"The flash cause the horse to be very frighten."

This post is way past due. Especially, considering it is one of the coolest things I've seen, so far!

The weekend after Troy left, I headed back to Kamakura to see the Yabusame festival. On the surface, it's archery from horseback. But, like many things in Japan, there's always more. For those of you that want to know the "more" part: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabusame. I'm not here to teach you Japanese culture and history. Furthermore, chances are, you didn't come here to learn about Japanese culture and history.

As I was sitting around killing time, still in my pjs, J-Pop and J-Ma showed up at my door, fully dressed and asked if I was ready.

I asked, "Ready for what?"

They answered that we were going to Kamakura together. In their many years in the area, they themselves have never seen Yabusame. Noriko was working, so it was just a dad, mom, and son day.

We got there about 11 a.m. and it rained for the next 3 hours (that's also how long we had to wait for the shooting to begin).

There were wet pigeons.

There were wet cheerleaders.

There were wet spectators.

First of all, don't ask me why there were cheerleaders. I just take the photos. As you can see, all of the open umbrellas negated my height advantage, in the crowd. It was mostly old ladies and at the slightest drop of water, they'd open their aquascutum (sp?). Later, when it quit raining, the occasional raindrop, disturbed by the wind, would fall. Fwwwt-pop! Fwwwwwt-pop! All the umbrellas would spring open.

The lane that the archers rode down was fairly long. Targets were on one side and people crowded in to see everything. We moved around but finally settled in one spot. We stood there for about two hours, waiting for it to start. J-Pop didn't look too comfortable. I asked if this was going to be his first time and last time. He said yes.

We were stationed at the first of the three targets. I didn't notice, until now, the ninja in my picture. I bet his pictures are better than mine!

Where's the ninja?

The release!

In flight!

Contact!

Reloading.

Each archer had to hit three targets. We could see them hit or miss the first target. After that, a woman on the loudspeaker would announce the next two. Before the announcements, we already knew the results. You could hear the crowd cheer or gasp at the next two targets.

I did my best to capture targets being hit, but my angle prevented the money shot. In this one, he had just scored on a small ceramic disc. The targets were varied. The first run was a bouquet of flowers. Next was a bullseye. After that they hit a board and for the end, a small ceramic plate. That's what can be seen, if you look hard enough, on the ground and disintegrating, in this last picture.

The title of this entry is a quote from the loudspeaker. She would frequently announce, in English, that the flash of a camera is prohibited. Apparently, in the past, it has proved to be very distracting to the horse and the archer. I can only imagine what happened. Incidentally, the only person in our group to get in trouble for using the flash, was an elderly JAPANESE man. Maybe they should've made the announcement in Japanese, as well.

Unrelated Photos Come Together To Make An Entry

I've never seen any (except in the mirror) but here's proof of other Okies in the area!

For those of you that aren't too sure of my location: Go to Tokyo. Go south to Yokohama. Keep going south until you hit Yokosuka.

Here's what it looks like to ride an uncrowded bus. I actually know most of the people in this shot. They're part of the hiking crew that I run with.

Here's the building where I have my group English class. It's about a 12 minute walk from the house.

I'm pretty sure that Some People aren't too proud that I came to Japan, but hopefully, those Same Some People would be proud that I cleared out some land (two bags of weeds!) and planted three tomato and two cucumber plants (more to come).

The last of the homo sausage. Did you get yours?

The house that Noriko's grandparents used to live in. We were driving around one day and she pointed it out.

Toroi-san in Japan: Part 4

Continuing from the last entry on this topic, one night at the Uno House, Troy and I came hobbling in. As usual, the "lobby" was overcrowded with hiking boots, sandals, and sneakers. It was always a test of balance to come in, carrying a backpack and try to balance on one foot while taking off the shoe on the other foot. I was doing my regular act and Troy had already shed his shoes. He disappeared into the dining/common area.

Immediately, I could hear some garbled Engrish. Then, I could hear some garbled Japanglish (from Troy). Soon, I heard a pleading, "Jory-san? Jory-san?" After that, I heard Troy saying, "Wakarimasen (I don't understand). Jory-san?" I finally finished slipping both shoes off and stacking them on top of the hiking shoes pile. I headed into the dining area to see what was troubling Troy, so much.

One of the Uno House denizens (guest? resident? homeless?), the old man with no teeth and in gray polyester long johns, had blocked Troy's with an outstretched hand. "What you need?" He was asking.

"How we can help you?" Another Japanese man chimed in. This guy was the front desk person that actually checked us in.

I told them, "We have a room here. We are staying here."

Mr. Long Johns directed his attention to me, "Are you German?" As he said this, he used his eyes to point at Troy.

My brain was still translating "Are you German?" and was reacting a little slow, because this was an unexpected question, when he said "English?"

I said "Yeah, we speak English." Suddenly, he bowed and immediately got out of the way, apologizing.

Back in our "room" we couldn't figure out what that was all about. Maybe they received a fax from Interpol about two suspicious Eurotrash German hostelers.

The photo above is just a random picture, taken by Troy, in Kyoto.

Everywhere we went, couples were wrapping themselves in the downhanging branches of the cherry trees. Caught up in the moment, I posed for Troy.

Just a couple of more pictures of sakura.

On one of Troy's last days here, we took him to Kamakura. It's often referred to as Little Kyoto (or something like that: the other Kyoto or Kyoto of the East- you get the picture, but I could be confusing it with Kanazawa). Above Noriko, Troy, and some other person are enjoying being in my picture.

Above, is a picture of the Daibutsu (Big Buddha) in Kamakura. Troy treated us the 20 yen each and we all went inside. Ignoring the previous days' lessons, Troy banged his head on the way out. Immediately murmurs of "The tall foreigner banged his head!" could be hear from the line behind us.

On Troy's last day, I accompanied him onto the train and made sure he had enough knowledge to find his way to the airport. On that same day, Kamakura was hosting a parade, so I made a little sidestop. All of the shinto shrine members gather in the streets and each shrine has a float that is carried on their shoulders (the men, anyway) as they make their route. Mostly, I think it's just an excuse to be noisy. I asked a Japanese person what the festival is for. Their answer, "It's for tourists."

Some chanting revelers carrying their float (mikoshi).

Part of the Kamakura Police Drillteam. Does the Muskogee P.D. have a drill team? If they did, I wonder what their uniforms would look like. I was surprised at the number of young women in the K.P.D.

While waiting for the parade to start, another foreigner struck up a conversation with me. His name was Chris and he currently lives in Okinawa with his girlfriend (she's from Hokkaido). That would be like moving from Alaska to live in Hawaii. He teaches at a university and freelances as a photographer/writer for a military magazine. He also takes tons of photos to put online with a company that sells stock photographs. He had just about finished his one thousand and something-th photo when we met. In the picture above, that's him in the corner.

Chris explained that he had to take up his current position because of the sun's location in the sky and because this avenue, with the cherry blossoms and the shinto arch are uniquely identifiable with Kamakura. The problem was that most of his shots that showed this view, only showed the backsides of the paraders (He too, was surprised at the women of the Kamakura P.D.).

He was a really nice, smart guy. After the parade, we had some coffee and we talked a little about teaching English, training in the martial arts, and the Kamakura Drill Team. If you'd like to see some of his work, you can go to http://www.travel67.com. I'm sure that he'd also be tickled if you needed any of his photographs for your own projects.

Earthquake #4

While waiting at a stoplight the car began shaking. We gave each other that "I wonder what's wrong with the car" look and then it stopped as the light turned green (or blue?) and we drove away. A few minutes later, we got a call from some friends (we were on our way to their house) and they were just making sure that we survived the earthquake. I'm getting so desensitized that I don't even know when they're happening. That's the way I like it. I just hope that's where it remains. We had a 3 but in Shizuoka it was 4.