Saturday, December 20, 2014

Badaud Dispatch 9---- Riots

Despite being buried in my little academic bubble under the sycamore trees I have been keeping up with news from America, and it's unrelentingly bad. I feel like I should be at home protesting in the streets, as my civil duty. Concerned internationals ask what in the hell is wrong with my country, and I don't know how to respond. It's hard to reconcile a humanist outlook with cops shooting unarmed children and getting away with it.

Here it is dreamy and peaceful and there is no local reporting on unrest, or perhaps there is no unrest. As cosmopolitan as Tokyo is, it does not have the same prickle of excitement that New York does. I suppose that is the payoff for following the rules. I got a parking ticket on my bike for leaving it outside a coffeeshop rather than paying ¥150 to put it in the official lot, and felt like such a rebel.

And so will this five year old

Fall has blazed by, with some of the most extraordinary colors I have ever seen in my life. Some friends and I went to Kyoto, which was ceaselessly, eye-poppingly beautiful.

Move over, Hudson Highlands.

I went to one of the strangest shrines I've seen yet, Fushimi Inari-Taisha. It's about 4 kilometers of orange torii leading up and down a mountain. Walking under them is an act of pilgrimage, a processional, and an exercise in color over-saturation. It occurred to me that a great deal of my time here has been spent ascending hills and mountains in large groups.

Stairs, mountains and orange- my favorite things!

Every single torii has been paid for by a company; the names are discreetly inscribed on the back so you only see them coming down. I recognized everything from Asahi to Toyota to one that just said, in English, 'Tattoo Parlour'. 

Some of them were fading a bit, but there were elderly guys here and there with ladders and buckets of orange paint. 

Kyoto has an entirely different feeling from Tokyo. The streets are narrower, the shops smaller, the pace slower. For the first time since my arrival I felt really in love with a place. It didn't hurt that it was the loveliest weekend of the fall and the large Buddhist population makes vegetarian food easy to find. We rode rented hybrids to a castle,

Just somewhere in the suburbs

And stayed in an amazing hippie guest house on Lake Biwa with sliding doors and futon beds and a tiny tree house in the yard. I spent the whole weekend in a permanent state of enchantment. 

Ten steps from the door

I took a cheap night bus there which was terrible, and an expensive one back which was slightly less terrible. They are not designed for any human spines I've ever seem. The latter had an 'executive suite' on the lower level; I resisted the urge to peek in. 

School picked up for two enjoyable weeks in the form of a venture capitalism class, taught by a charismatic and shouty American prof. I have never been remotely interested in that sort of thing, but I do enjoy short intense projects and I was lucky to have a really excellent team. We designed an app that wakes you up in time for your subway stop. 

The mascot is a hamster named Jonas, chosen as a culturally neutral beastie. 

We didn't win any funding for it (too nerdy, I think) but I had a good time and worked till 2 AM nine nights in a row. 

I also went to a public speaking seminar where I learned to modulate, make expansive gestures and argue succinctly. I also learned that the judicious utilization of sophisticated and arcane verbiage creates an impression of intelligence, or in my unsubtle case, causes a collective exodus from any areas in which my voice is audible. The professor was quite excellent, actually. I hate public speaking and tend to get completely sick before I do it, so it was good to get some concrete techniques to cling to. 

Today I went with a train enthusiast friend to try an get a 100 year anniversary Tokyo metro card (called a Suica). It is, admittedly, pretty:

Tokyo station is also really pretty, in a Western way

We were not, however prepared for the volume of fellow train enthusiasts: 

Who all looked surprisingly normal for hardcore nerds

After waiting for a while in the massive crush we determined that it was not worth it, and wandered around gaping at the  thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of train lovers all queued up in nicely self-regulating lines. I did see a more rabid contingent including old ladies, students, and little kids, just sort of leaning their way through some overwhelmed looking cops who were trying to stop them. This was the first sign of civil disobedience I have seen in Japan, and I was impressed. 

The line continued into and then out of the subway station. 

Apparently the crowds stayed on till two in the afternoon, well after the cards had been exhausted. When I found out they were going for hundreds (or thousands, but I must say I don't believe that) of dollars on Japanese eBay, it made a bit more sense. 

I'm trying to write down a full account of everything I've seen so far. It's not easy. Too often, I get bolloxed up in how I feel and who said what, rather than the wondrous (I mean that literally) things in front of my face. A professor I know is doing a study about memory and we were talking about how unreliable it is. I hope I can piece together something basically accurate. I don't want to forget anything. 

Better get the lot written by Friday; my gentleman-friend is turning up then and I will effectively vanish off the map. I can't wait!

--Isis