Badaud Dispatch 10-- Finding Magic

Keio is arranged so that the holiday break happens across Christmas and New Year, and then there is another month of frantic classes tacked on before we all clear out in early February. It will take a lot of willpower to apply myself to school till then; I've been here four months now and I do not regret a minute, but it's about time to go home.

My gentleman-friend came to see me and we spent two fantastic weeks running around Tokyo and Kyoto and Nara. For the first time since September my sense of needing to be on guard and alert in a strange place twenty-four hours a day melted away and I truly relaxed- I felt like a hedgehog that had been curled up for months finally straightening out. It was so nice to see Japan through fresh eyes, and to realize that scenery and things I had come to completely ignore were, in fact, extraordinary and exotic.

I may not approve of selfies, but will accept shadows.

We went to the mountains near Nagano, and it was strange to watch the landscape change from the late fall of Tokyo to deep winter from the Shinkansen windows. 

Mountains!!

We stayed in a traditional ryokan (inn) in a snow monkey park, a short walk outside a town whose drains sent up great clouds of steam from the hot springs. Like everything, the path was perfectly groomed and the late afternoon light on the wet snow made a golden, dreamlike atmosphere. 

That my photographs did not pick up.

The ryokan was built into the side of a hill next to a stream and a geyser. I'd never seen a geyser before; it was just sort of there, sending up steam and roaring. It would have been less strange, I thought, if there were barriers and signs and safety tape. I suppose the Japanese approach to geysers is the same as typhoons-- it's a thing that happens, and people are trusted to have enough sense not to jump in them or go out in them, respectively. 

Oh look, there's a geyser. 

I expected to see monkeys, but seeing them sauntering around our feet as if we were furniture was unnerving and amazing. Their faces are so sweet, so human and yet so not, I did not know how to think about them. A cat, I will approach and try to make friends with; a wild beast, like a raccoon I will be quiet around and try not to frighten. These monkeys were neither friendly nor afraid; they did not give a damn. It was a strange feeling, and as cliche as it sounds, humbling. I think it's good to not know quite where you stand once in a while. 

Of course, they were so fluffy I just wanted to hug them; I knew I never could.

We stood outside and watched the night come down and the younger monkeys tumbling around and playing in the snow. It was lovely to be in the mountains watching the day fade without light or noise or air pollution. The ryokan looked like this:

Definition of inviting

After an amazing traditional meal we went and parked in the onsen (hot bath) outside, along with half a dozen monkeys. The water, coming as it did directly out of the ground, smelled like sulfur and felt amazing; it was just this side of bearable to sit in. The snow came down; the monkeys stuck to the edges like fluffy limpets, holding their babies' heads above water with blissed out looks on their scarlet faces. It was quite magical and quite strange. After a while some couples came out with selfie sticks and flash cameras so we went up to our tatami room and slept like peaceful bricks. 

In the morning we went to the designated monkey park at feeding time. There were the gorgeous mountains and the adorable monkeys and dozens of tourists in new winter gear and high heeled shoes snap-snap-snapping away. 

Each speck is a monkey! I was one of the offending tourists, except my winter gear is old.

Here is one more gratuitous geyser picture:

Just a geyser, no bigs. 

We had a lovely New Years Eve in a weirdly subdued Shibuya (the signs announced that there would be NO countdown and there damn well wasn't) and went to Hatsumode, which is the massively crowded, quiet visit to shrines on New Years Day. I bought a charm for Controlling One's Fate and asked Emperor Meiji to keep an eye on me. He was a liberal sort of guy, I don't suppose he'd disapprove of my ill-mannered western tail too much. 

We went back to beautiful Kyoto in the Shinkansen, which was a lot nicer than the Night Bus. In fact, the seats were designed for human spines and the bentos we got in the station were designed by true artists. We passed Mt Fuji, which looked like a painting. 

Hi Fujisan!

And hung out with some deer in Nara:

Messengers of the gods!

These hairy little bastards know that tourists love them and hang around cadging 'deer crackers' and head butting you if you don't deliver fast enough. Like the snow monkeys, they just wander around without the slightest regard or interest in humans (except in their cracker-dispensing capacity). I felt less guilty about their domestication than I did about the snow monkeys; perhaps it was their blank, unintelligent gazes. They stand in the temples, they stand in the roads, they stand around the ponds, they snooze under trees and we saw a few actually bounding through the woods, which was refreshing. 

And they give the best side eye of any beast, human or otherwise. 

I'll have to continue this in another segment; I made a tacit promise to write about some bands and that's its own entry. Soon this time!

-I

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

Badaud Dispatch 8-- Et in Arcadia Wanderlust

One of my (admittedly flippant) reasons to go abroad was that this would be one year I wouldn't be whacked over the head with wanderlust when the fall came. I would already be wandering! The sense of smothered longing would not appear at inconvenient times (5 AM, history class) and make me unable to concentrate! I was wrong, of course. 

Last weekend I went to a ginkgo festival at the foot of Mt Takau. The gingko trees there do not mess around: 

The yellow goes on for miles

There were food stands and musicians and vendors along the yellow avenue, like a very long Smorgasburg. It one one of those brilliantly gilded fall days where your eyes hurt from the intensity of the colors. There were samurai:

Note the guns and the swords

And amazingly synchronized dance troupes with absolutely unflagging energy:

That flag guy was at it for nearly half an hour without a rest

It was strange to be at a festival with no idea what each dance represented, what the songs were about, or really what the occasion was. We bought gingko nuts, only to discover they had not been roasted and tasted exactly the way gingko fruits smell (the streets, unsurprisingly, were entirely gingko fruit free. I think the armies of elderly guys with brooms and buckets that appear to be everywhere were responsible). I felt increasingly ill at ease and restless, standing in a crowd with the mountains so close, and finally ran off in their general direction. 

Follow the river!

Hachioji is tucked up against the foothills, in the inimitably confusing Japanese style that makes a town look completely flat until you suddenly find yourself up against a wall of hill that your bike is probably not up to, or, worse, at the top of a cliff that your brakes are definitely not equipped to descend. On foot the hills creep up more slowly, which in this case was distressing- I wanted to be in the forest, alone, and the hazy woods kept receding or having fences around them. I gave up on the Official Heritage Trail which was crowded and paved and walled, and hurried through the town. How lovely it must be, I thought, to live here in the shadow of the blazingly bright mountains and know where the damn paths are. 

This way is trespassing.

This way too.

Finally I was about to give up and go meet my companions at the station and maybe go for a really long bike ride upon returning to Hiyoshi, when I saw exactly what I was looking for:

A PATH!

So I ran straight up the mountain as fast as I could, and the cars and music faded away at last and the air was sweet and clear. There was a little shrine with a fox god at the top and I bowed most respectfully. I may be a cold and logical atheist, but I was filled with such a sense of gratitude and peaceful delight to be there, dusty and out-of-breath, looking down over the coral-stained town. 

I didn't photograph the shrine because I read somewhere it was disrespectful.

I ran back down and miraculously made the train, and fell asleep at once. I was wearing khaki pants (laundry day) and noticed that they were not even slightly dirty. I think Japan simply hasn't got any dirt. 

School has become a bit stressful lately, as there is a presentation day coming up. I don't know if it is a communication issue, a language issue, or a cultural one, but the way the academic schedule and expectations are laid out is...not what we're used to. It's a tribute to my colleagues that we are all navigating the murkiness of university bureaucracy without too much grief or drama. I think everyone is trying very hard, but it does sometimes feel like a great deal of information is being lost somewhere in a miasma and everyone is confused. It's been two times I've left a frustrating meeting to gallop around the athletic track in my entirely non-athletic boots just to blow off steam. 

But hey! I made a robot! 

I WILL BE GONE SOME TIME!

He is based on Titus Oates if anyone is wondering. And if anyone is wondering why Titus Oates needs to be a robot I could not tell you, but he cracks me up every time. I broke the one above from making him fall over too much; I had to make a replacement. 

Maybe next post I'll write about school and design more. I worked on a movie about a ghostly karate man, thought up a transmedia project for homesick luddites, and am up to my ears in a collapsable, disposable, unfortunately still kinda goofy looking bike helmet. 

And it's really hard to concentrate on any of these when I can see the mountains from the elevator. 

--Isis

Badaud Dispatch 7-- New Gods (And More Old Ones)

I have noticed a definite prevalence of fish in Japanese everything. I bit into what looked exactly like an apple pastry the other day, only to discover it was full of fish. Today I saw that even shoes are fish.

I didn't buy a pair. Then I jumped in the ocean and stepped barefoot on a fish. Serves me right. 

I have settled into a routine, more or less. There is school, slightly more time consuming but still nowhere near Pratt stressful, and relentless adventuring in all directions all the time. By the time I get home to New York I will want to sleep for weeks. I spent one day fully indoors and was immediately restless and grumpy, so I suppose this is just how I am wired. That and my dorm room is small and grey and hasn't got a cat in it.

Tokyo Designers Week was last week, and it was cool. 

Light up cell phone suits

Double hilted safety sword

Holographic fashion frog!

Again, it was distressing to have almost no Japanese. I really wanted to chat with designers, and while everyone tried their best and was patient I just haven't the vocabulary. So I smiled a lot and said 'Sugoi desu ne!' and was handed informational packets with beautiful graphics that I cannot read.* 

I did find someone who spoke perfect English:

She has better hair than I do.

It was only the nonspecific lip movement that made it obvious that she's silicon and wires and breadboards and batteries. It is really unsettling to speak to a robot:

Me: Konnichiwa! O genki desu ka?

Her: (In the squeaky voice of an affected teenager) Konnichiwa. Genki desu. Yoroshiku onagaishimaaaaaasu. 

Me: Um, do you speak English?

Her: Yes of course. How are you? Good day. What's your name? Where are you from? Hehe. 

Me: I'm Isis. I'm from New York. 

Her: (Eyes getting big and slightly misaligned) New York! Cooooool! Hehe. 

Awkward silence

Me: Um. Er. What do you like to do in your spare time? Do you have spare time?

Her: (Vibrating) I like to learn things! It is cool to learn new things. Don't you think?

Me: Oh yes. You bet. (Awkward silence). Um, I'm off. Nice to meet you. 

Her: I am very glad to meet you, Eesees. I'm sure we will meet again. 

Me: (quietly) In my damn nightmares....

There were also some comfortingly robotic looking robots:

They did the electric slide.

The other day in class I was trying to explain why I personally would not like a humanoid robot, even if it did the dishes and the laundry and picked my socks off the floor. It's just too close to a person, and if I'm able to feel embarrassed and tongue tied from just talking to a robot, I don't think I could bring myself to order one to do my menial tasks. I'd feel guilty and want to pay it. However, if the robot in question looked entirely inhuman, not even like a beast, I could be ok with it. An unsympathetic box can collect my socks any day. 

Speaking of beasts, here is a confession: I saw a squirrel and immediately seized my camera to take a picture. It was a normal grey squirrel but I haven't seen one in two months. Fortunately for my dignity it scooted up a tree and I didn't get a picture and I did not join the legions of doofuses who photograph squirrels. But I came really close. 

Today I went to Kamakura, which is a shrine-heavy area a bit past Yokohama. We started by visiting this giant peace goddess who is visible from the train:

See her up there? It must be nice to have a giant peace goddess watching over your town.

She was built in the 50s and has a nice sympathetic look to her. You can enter a hatch in the back and there's a little shrine. 

It's hard to make a giant head without being all looming, but the sculptor managed. 

Then we went to Kamakura proper, which was packed. There was some kind of children's festival, and dozens of unbearably cute kids in tiny kimonos. They were also without exception behaving themselves. I wanted to take pictures of them, but that seemed creepy so I didn't. 

Going to shrines involves a lot of running up stairs:

Grand stairs

Old stairs

Creepy stairs

It was lovely. My nonbeliever's soul is perfectly happy in a Shinto or Buddhist shrine, much more than in a church or synagogue. I appreciate that they are largely outdoors, on hilltops, and very welcoming. It's nice to just go and be somewhere quiet and peaceful for a bit. Even the little prayer gongs have a sweet, soothing ring. And there are bamboo forests! 

The best rustling ever

We visited the giant 12th century Buddha, who is in exceptionally good shape considering his age. 

You could buy little kawaii Buddha charms in the giftshop

And then ran to the beach with the windsurfers and the beautiful bluegrey waves and the still warm water. 

Move over, Atlantic. 

I could go on forever about this slightly enchanted endless summer and the beautiful trains and lovely prayer flags and all the books I am reading and the strange short nights. But there is homework to do and possibly a robot bit acquisition mission, so off I go. 

-I

*I am studying! But I am just not good at languages and it's taking forever and there are SO many Kanji... I hate being bad at stuff. 

Badaud Dispatch 6-- Old Gods

Today I got an assignment to write a sci-fi story about a technological solution to a human want. Aside from being stoked to write fiction or really anything (writing is one of my greatest pleasures, between cycling and sleeping) I think it's an interesting problem. I have always viewed technology with a certain unease, although I use it all the time. I'm very conscious of becoming too far from the physical world, and how easy it is to forget the feel of the sun and water and leaves and sand and real things. 

I went on a field trip to Sony, and it was really impressive. They had super high resolutions screens, full sensory music videos, all kinds of real time interactive stuff. It was glassy and shiny and sleek and cool. And I left feeling a little sad, because I so love the real world and actual, existing things, and it seems to be slipping away gadget by gadget.

They didn't allow photos. So here is a giant saw instead. 

Later, I went to a robot expo, which also didn't allow photos. There were big robots, little robots, service robots, rolling robots, and moonwalking robots. My terrible Japanese was not up to technical chat (or really much of any chat) but I was glad to see what should be out in a world in a year or two. There was one, much like the picture below, which is supposed to be comforting. I picked it up and it weighed and purred more or less like a big cat. It was comforting. I didn't even feel bad and it made me feel better. But also somewhat revolted, because, though it was warm and soft and cute, it was a machine. 

Chummy, chummy plush

There were also these little penguin-like things being tested by very serious men in suits. 

These people are having too much fun.

It felt weird to be one of a handful of women, and the only Western one. I'm becoming used to being stared at (politely, surreptitiously) but it was particularly marked there. 

On Saturday I watched the most slow paced, introspective fireworks display I have ever seen. There were acts. And intermissions. It was lovely. Thousands of people stood watching on the beach off Enoshima saying 'Sugoi!' [awesome]. It was so different from the ones at home, as unflashy as a fireworks display can be. Then I ran into the water and ran right out again because it was full of dead minnows. 

SUGOIIIII! (Video by Dayna)

And on Sunday I joined the Keio Birdwatching Club on an expedition to the 'Gyotoku Birdwatching Place', but we somehow wound up helping the nature center people harvest rice instead. I think, though I could be wrong, that we wandered into the wrong meeting and were too polite to leave and just went along with it. 

Some of my lovely fellow birdwatchers.

They gave us work clothes, which included hand towels and tiny boots. I managed to jam my feet in, but the pants were hopelessly short. I had to assure the impossibly sweet park lady that I really didn't mind getting my jeans dirty. Really! Truly! I think they may be used to somewhat more fastidious city people than myself. 

That fellow showing me how to bundle rice stalks used to design logos for Nikon. Who knew?

It was so lovely to spend a morning outside, doing simple manual labor with the crows wheeling by and the sweet smell of the cut stalks and the satisfying sense of accomplishing something tangible. It's hard to write about this without sounding terribly corny, but I was genuinely reminded that all the digital excitement and robots and screens are only a thin layer over what is real, which is the land.

Drying on a bamboo rack

Then I went to an autumn festival in Kawagoe, which is a district full of traditional buildings and shrines. There were floats and drummers and vast, happy, lantern-lit crowds. It reminded me a bit of the Philadelphia Mummers, except that there were no knee deep piles of trash, vomit and drunk guys. In fact, the few times I saw an empty patch of street there was not so much as a cigarette butt. 

Here comes a float!

There were stands with amazing street food, stationary stages with traditional performers, and a pervasive, though relatively quiet, sound of flutes and drums. It wasn't raucous in the American sense, because while the mood was bright and celebratory there was a solemnity about it too. Even the children, in their festival yukata had on serious smiles. 

I don't know who this dancer was representing, but he had moves. 

It was thrilling to run through the crowded streets, to watch the streams of brightly dressed people sweep back and forth. It was intensely dreamlike, and it seems appropriate that almost none of my photos came out. 

Drummers

Then my (heavily international) group read each other children's stories on the train (first traditional Japanese ones, then Struwwelpeter and Max and Moritz) and that only added to the sense of having come unstuck in time and place. Upon finally stumbling back into the dorm I fell asleep at once and had strange, colorful dreams. 

There were real candles in the lanterns.

It's a good thing for me that I thrive on strangeness and novelty. There is plenty of that here. 

-Isis