Adults Descend on Ninja Village!

Col and I visited the Ninja Village in Togakushi on Saturday. Basically, the Ninja Village is a small, rustic amusement park in the middle of the woods and the mountains. It's an amusement park for kids and it's supposed to allow them to feel what it's like to be a "ninja" and experience "ninja training." You can rent ninja clothes, throw sharp, metal ninja stars at targets, climb the sides of buildings, walk across rope bridges, and explore "ninja houses" that are filled with trap doors and dark mazes.

The Ninja Village was incredibly dangerous and I almost fell from rope bridges and rooftops many times. The whole time I kept saying, "Sweet mother of God, this is soooo dangerous! If this were in America, this place would be sued by long lines of angry parents!" There are no railings anywhere, kids can climb up onto the rooftops of many buildings, and children are generally encouraged to swing plastic ninja swords with reckless abandon at any passerby who dares to even blink the wrong way at a young ninja-in-training. Needless to say, this place is a lot of fun if you are 24 years-old and jealous of 4 year-olds with ninja costumes and swords.

left: Me defying gravity in the Ninja House













left: Col being smacked by a Ninja Gorilla while riding a Ninja Horse. This thing jiggles back and forth when you push a button. When I sat on it, it made a grinding noise and just stopped.

We were the only ones who sat on this silly contraption and exploited it for its seemingly obvious sexual suggestiveness. Everyone else stared at us while we laughed our asses off posing for absurd pictures.




left: Death at the hands of the Blue Ninja.

















left: Summer dusk in Nagano after ninja fun.













left: We passed a temple on the way home and got out to take some pictures. If you look closely, you can see the mountains peeking up through the mist in the background.

Alice's Goodbye Party

left: The woman of the hour

Our friend Alice is ditching us for Tokyo. These photos are from her farewell party.














left: The ever-gracious host Patti

















left: The crazed lunatic

Rice

One of the coolest things about living in Japan is watching the different stages of rice production as the seasons change. A few weeks ago, everyone was planting small rice seedlings into flooded rice fields. Now, the rice is about six inches tall and has thickened considerably so that all of the fields look as though they are covered in lush grass.

I've heard that most Japanese families consume so much rice throughout any given year that they prefer to grow their own rice so that they can avoid buying rice all year from the supermarket (5kg of rice $20--$30. Col and I go through this amount in about 3 weeks and, unlike many Japanese, we don't eat rice for breakfast. Supporting a family's rice habit requires one to grow rice or go bankrupt. Many families share a field with 2 or 3 other extended families.)

The Garden is Growing!

left: This plant has since been eaten alive by annoying green inch worms.













left: baby tomatoes

















left: The purple lettuce is now up to my hip! I'm going to let it grow and see if it touches the moon.











left: baby corn

Wasabi! Wasabi! Wasabi!

left: These pictures (not sure if they will come up blurry on the blog) are from a wasabi farm in Matsumoto. Wasabi is a difficult crop to grow as it requires massive amounts of flowing water to stay alive. Because of this, it is grown in river beds (if you look at the photos closely, you can see the bends in the river--the wasabi covers the entire river). It's an amazing sight to see. At the farm, one can buy wasabi beer, wasabi ice cream, wasabi bread, wasabi (of course), and wasabi spreads of every imaginable variety.

Slam Poetry in Matsumoto, Nagano

left: I performed a piece called "Stone Skimming" at a talent show for the JETs in Nagano. There were about 150 people in attendance and I was able to sell about 20 CDs at intermission after my performance. Two Japanese people bought CDs so they could practice their English at home by reading the lyrics and listening along to the tracks! God only knows what words will sink into their linguistic reservoirs from listening to that CD!


I worked out lighting cues with the stage crew before the performance so the lights would go red during the creepy parts of the piece and green during the tranquil parts.







left: "The limp boy rose to his feet and kept rising three, four, five feet off the ground. Plus an extra two, dangling shoeless, with cuts and bruises, from rocks on the kitchen floor."

Interesting Little Things

1. A student dropped her cell phone in the hall at school. Upon hitting the floor, the phone exploded into four pieces that shot out in all directions like a technological firework. The girl shrieked and pushed her open hands to her face Home-Alone-style. She bent down and reached for the phone fragments while muttering "No! No! No!" in Japanese over and over again. Cell phones are like babies here. Shatter one and you're no better than a heartless murderer.

2. I have been tutoring two high school students (siblings) for one hour each Thursday night. We chat for an hour, and after the lesson I stay for another hour to have dessert and tea. The mother of the house always peeks her head into the study at the hour's end and asks "May I enter?" (the question seems so strange coming from the home's owner). I always say "Yes, of course!" and she then scurries into the kitchen to prepare the desserts. The desserts are always delicious, sometimes homemade, and always sweetened with good conversation as the mother used to teach English and is very outspoken and intelligent. Two weeks ago, she gave me an entire homemade cheesecake to take home. Needless to say, earning about $45 for each session seems criminal because of how easily and quickly the time flies by, but I continue to show up, week after week, for my evening "work" nonetheless.

3. Col and I went to watch her students at their annual brass band concert. The program said the show would start at 1:30 p.m. When the clock struck 1:30, a long, brain-rattling alarm sounded in the concert hall and was followed by the silent entrance of the band and the conductor. If you are not punctual, you're left behind in the land of the rising sun. It's a fact.
Band members took their places in their seats and rested their respective instruments on their laps with precision. Clarinets? Held in the right hand, bell on the right knee, left hand on left lap. Flutes held with both hands clasped together and rested across the lap. They performed as one would expect such a disciplined band to perform.

4. No one has a big grassy lawn here in Japan. Instead people have gardens. In the spring, summer, and fall, every space of residential land that is not covered with a house or garage is covered with some sort of garden. Unlike a yard covered in grass, gardens help sustain a family with healthy produce, cut back on the amount of fuels used to grow and import vegetables to a certain area/market, and help preserve the mental health of those who manage the garden (gardening is good for the noggin and is thought to help flush the faces of many Japanese with that beautiful octogenarian glow). Lawns serve no significant purpose. If and when I move back to and settle in America, corn will be my grass and tomato plants will be my shrubs. Fuck the neighbors.

Congratulations are in Order!

Some of my friends here in Ueda and two friends back home deserve some congratulations for passing Go and collecting more than their $200...way more.

Alice: Congrats on getting the job in Tokyo! I'm psyched for you. Without your directions and advice over the past year, The City That Hides The Horizon would still seem too large to puncture. Ueda is losing a hospitable and warm-hearted JET. You're leaving big shoes to fill :(

Mike and Patti: Woohoo! Congrats on the baby news! It's comforting knowing that intelligent people who kick ass are multiplying and babymaking. I'm so excited! I know you'll make awesome parents because...well...good, genuine people who can lure huge plants into this world from the smallest of seeds often end up becoming contemplative, supportive parents who lure babies into this world from the smallest of seeds. Thanks for showing all of us unmarried, babyless folks how to do the get-married-have-a-baby thing in proper style. You're unsuspecting mentors (and that's the best kind!) After six or seven months, send the little one over to me for his/her first skateboarding lessons.

Gary and Diana: Six years in the making! Congrats on the engagement news! I'm happy for you! When you move to Gary, Indiana to live out a raunchy existence simply because your adopted city's name allows you to, let me know. Like Hale-Bopp, "The Great Comet of 1997" as it's been etched into the memories of astonomy lovers worldwide, we all knew this engagement was coming. Unlike Hale-Bopp, however, this engagement isn't cold and covered in ice.

Birthday Bliss

left: This went in my belly on my birthday. It's homemade. It's an ice cream cake. It's covered in bananas. It has a peanut butter cookie crust. Chocolate is swirled into the layer of vanilla ice cream.

Note to self: Discover/create 20-30 holidays throughout the calendar year that require the consumption of this sort of edible orgasm.

Rent's due? Whip up The Cake again! Day to Honor Rice? Cake time! The-Sun-Rose-Again Day? Woohoo, Cake!

You Know You're in Japan When You See....

This for sale at the market and...

















A beer can so large that it comes with a handle and rests comfortably on the flat of one's shoulder and...











Jackets that are covered in English that justifies the inflated salaries of JET teachers in Japan.

There's an obvious English problem people! Don't fret, we're here to help!

Ueno in the Sun

I spent my last day in Tokyo skating around Ueno, Harajuku, and Shibuya. Everyone stared. I didn't see another person on a skateboard the entire time I was in Tokyo.

left: Lanterns in Ueno Park













left: A glimpse of Big Brother looking down on his flock near Ueno Station. BUY OR DIE!












left: Woman walking in Ueno Park, more stone lanterns along the edge of the path.












left: Stone lantern and leaves

Shibuya at Night

After staying for three days and two nights in downtown Shinjuku in Tokyo for a JET conference, I can finally begin to see why people are so attracted to The City that puts New York to shame in size, pace, and the way in which it can intimidate a visitor. Tokyo is beyond massive, but after a few open-ended, destination-less rides on some shockingly clean elevated subway cars, I feel like I am beginning to piece together the different sections of the city to make a vaguely cohesive mental map of the city's innards.

One of Tokyo's hearts, an electric organ called Shibuya that is fed with bento box, coffee, and sake sales revenue, sends out a 24 hour heartbeat that rattles the surrounding train tracks with an ever flowing stream of tourists and business men and women. Shibuya screams "Tokyo!!!" at the top its lungs seven days a week (it doesn't rest on Sundays as Japan's dominant religion is Capitalism).

left: Like most major intersections in cities and towns in Japan, Shibuya Crossing affords pedestrians a nice long opportunity to cross the street by giving red lights to car traffic on each street that feeds into the crossing. Watching people cross from the second story of a Starbuck's that overlooks the crossing (the busiest Starbucks in the world for all you junkies out there) is really entertaining. For over an hour, I sat captivated by the scene. Every two minutes or so, hundreds of people cross the street--it never stops...ever...day or night, it doesn't make a difference.

left: Two vending machine customers. Japan is filled with vending machines. From vending machines in Japan, you can buy the following things:
--cigarettes for about $2.30 a pack
--large bottles of whiskey
--small bottles of whiskey
--sake
--an array of different sized beer cans
--2 litre bottles of soda or water
--hot french fries
--hot and cold coffee or soft drinks
--chicken nuggets (this last one was a rare find)

left: One of the side streets in Shibuya. The street is lined with ramen shops, small bars, restaurants, and clothing stores.











left: You know you've made it big when your face flashes on three screens simultaneously over Shibuya Crossing. Creepy creepy creepy.

Beautiful Dolls

When I went to Tokyo for a JET conference last week, I saw these dolls on display in a restaurant in my hotel. An artist created these dolls along with hundreds of small-scall figures and placed them around one of the restaurants in the Keio Plaza Hotel. The detail on their faces and their clothing was stunning.