*One cannot say much with mere letters and words.
Narcissus and Goldmund- Hermann Hesse*
4/26/2014
My brother: James you are going to be an uncle in October!
5/ 7/2014
Chika and I just got back from our “Golden Week” trip to the mountains of Nagano. Golden Week is one of the only times that Chika gets a long vacation from work so it is our only time to really go on a long trip together. Last year we went camping so this year we decided to try and get away from the city again and enjoy the beautiful nature that Japan has to offer. Nagano is famous for its mountains and I had never really explored there much so it was an easy choice. We woke up early and took a bullet train which is such a comfortable experience but also pretty expensive. For some places, like this one, there aren’t any other options. Our trip started off in a town in the mountains called 菅平 Sugadaira which was a very interesting place to visit in the spring. During the winter it is a ski town so all of the mountains in sight have ski lifts on them but because it is summer most of the runs have small farms planted on them. During the summer, because it is so much cooler in the highlands, the town becomes Japan’s epicenter for high school rugby and soccer, so every where we walked we were surrounded by people in soccer gear carrying soccer balls. We stayed at a little bed and breakfast where we were the only guests outside of the owner’s family, so we were treated very nicely. We had access to the kitchen and every day the August 1st, 2014 owner would go out with her grandchildren to pick 山菜 mountain herbs and vegetables and would share some with us at dinner.
Our first day we spent climbing a mountain, that in retrospect we were not at all prepared to climb. The top was covered in snow and it was a pretty tough climb without proper shoes. When we hit the snow, and were beginning to wonder if we should continue or not, a couple passed us with their little pug dog leading the way, snorting and sliding its way up the mountain. That was reassuring and an incredibly funny sight. We made it up and down and were treated to beautiful views of the northern Alps and their impressive snow covered peaks in the distance.
Our other days were spent checking out a really cool bakery constructed on this historic and old traditional Japanese street, riding rental bikes around the city and indulging in a beautiful Italian meal near our hotel. The owner of the bakery makes only sour dough bread with local wheat ground on site and it was really fun to talk to them about bread and faming and feel that connection. I even bought his book of recipes I was so impressed with how the bread tasted. Our last day we visited Bessho Onsen, which is a famous hot spring town on the edge of the mountains near Ueda. We went into lots of small little hot springs, ate delicious fresh food and drank coffee at a little shop where the young owner roasts all of the beans he uses that day by hand over a little charcoal fire. I was definitely inspired by this and a month later while I was mentioning the incident to the owner of the coffee roastery where I frequent, he handed me a pack of green coffee beans and told me to knock myself out. I gave it a shot and roasted my own beans in a frying pan which gave the beans a distinct frying pan taste but it was also empowering knowing that one can just roast beans at your house and that coffee is not this special magic bean that only professions can touch. I have tried it now on multiple occasions and they don’t seem to taste any better but it is so much fun I think I may just have to keep on doing it.
6/19/2014
Observations from a train seat
Huge hulk man with a skin condition looking at fairy porn manga
Sleeping girl slams her head into the train window when her neck goes limp and gravity gets the best of her heavy head
Old woman with blue hair, old man with purple hair
7/11/2104
It’s the first truly hot day of the year. The sun was shining all day and the sky a perfect light blue. I spent most of the day reading about classical music from a book that I checked out from the library. It was an unexpected conversation starter for my office which has become quite quiet since my favorite teachers were transferred to other schools. A teacher, who I have not been able to connect with in the slightest for some reason, apparently has a deep appreciation for classical music and offered to make me a mix CD of his favorite artists by Monday. Thank you. In the minutes before I am planning on biking home, the sky turns an array of blues and darker blues and the clouds look like you could just squeeze a flood out of them. I step on the pedals and the flood squeezes on out. The wind picks up and the road is more sea like than concrete. At times I don’t even peddle. The spraying water is enough to push me on home. Wave to the flower lady. Smile at the little girl who is also stuck out in the rain walking home. Strip naked in front of the door without regard for neighbors’ possible peeking. Thank heavens for unexpected weather to drench you skin and bone once in a while.
7/17/2104
It looks like I haven’t written a newsletter for about two months now. I can’t give a very good excuse for not having produced anything. I’ve been busy certainly but it has been hard to put it down into words, perhaps because their hasn’t been big events but lots of small happenings which are difficult to write about. For example we had our second Open mic and it was big success. Chika had been practicing a piano piece and one day I began to improvise with a big Opera tenor voice over the top of it, making sounds that a mostly deaf person with no knowledge of romance languages could mistake for Italian. Chika loved it and make me promise to accompany her during the real performance. A series of Google searches led me to a Pavarotti collaboration with James Brown singing a loose interpretation of “This is a man’s world” in Italian. I knew I had found my lyrics. It was a hit and I also practiced very hard and finally performed a classical guitar piece in public. Other acts included a recorder performance, Ukulele concerto, origami presentation, more magic and of course lots of singing. It was great, but I hope to find a different theme for our next event we host. Three open mics in a row may become redundant.
7/28/ 2014
This weekend Chika and I attended the summer festival which was being held in a little park next to my home. I have been enjoying the lanterns which have sprouted up all over the area around where I live making it really feel like summer. They are yellow and pink and have some family or company name written on them and each one has a light inside. Chika comes over and I am in charge of helping her put on her summer kimono called a yukata. After a few failed attempts and a few google searches I was able to more or less fake the knot that was needed to tie her special belt called an obi. I put on my boy version, which is much easier and we are out the door walking with our funny little wooden shoes over to Kunugiyama park. We are immediately spotted by my Bengali acquaintance who flags us over. He asks how Japan is going and says that he loves it here, even after being here for 20 years. He said he is so happy he can’t even express it in words. Happy every day. I think he was telling the truth.
We break away and go towards the dancing. There are some people on a big platform banging away a rhythm on drums with people dressed in yukatas circling around them doing a little dance which looks to me like they are imitating digging a hole, then planting a seed and finally bowing to the plant? I try to join in but it isn’t really clear who is the leader and who is dancing the correct version of the dance as it seems that everyone is doing their own little variation. I pick an old woman who seems to not be drunk and soon I am spotted by an old man and dragged up on the circular platform stage for everyone to look at. I go around once trying to fake the dance as best as I can and suddenly the announcer gets on the PA system and says in Japanese “ Please look everyone to the stage, there is a foreigner dancing with a yukata and a hat on, I repeat a foreigner on the stage, please turn your attention to the stage”.
8/1/2104
Tomorrow I take a flight home after not having been home for two years. Thank you all so much for being supportive of these crazy adventures that I go on and for being a part of my life. As I was cleaning out my apartment a little before I shut it up for three weeks while I’m back in the states, I retook a look at all of the letters and postcards that I have received from people all over the world and felt a sense of wonder that my life has brought me into contact with such diverse and wonderful people. Thank you and know that I learn so much from all of you. Zen and Zebras, James
Bike news
I know not everyone is into biking so I’ll put these stories at the end for people that would like to skip them. I only went on two bike trips this spring, both because of being busy with other events but also because my knees have been causing me problems and I have been trying to rest them. Right after our trip around Mt. Fuji, I convinced Ben to take an airplane with me and spend a week cycling in Shikoku, which is one of the four big land masses that make up Japan. We brought everything that we would need to camp but actually ended up never using our tent. It was still too early for mosquitoes so sleeping under the stars was still an option and was such a nice experience and actually the first time I have slept outside without a tent in all my life. This was so far the most scenic and just all around impressive bike trip that I have taken. Shikoku, especially in the interior of the island, is pretty uninhabited but still has great roads and just enough hot springs and little towns to make riding comfortable. Google maps has lots of little roads that don’t appear until you zoom in as far as possible and these are normally roads that are half roads and half dirt paths or sometimes just forest. This trip took us up and down two entire mountains on roads that were more made for jeeps or tanks than bicycles and I still can’t believe that our bikes survived, let alone us. Other roads were full of wildlife such as monkeys, deer and the elusive kamoshika which I have written about before. Our last day we took this really interesting road that connects the island of Shikoku to Honshu, another big island. It passes over six micro- islands along the way and offers very nice views. We decided to push ourselves and try and do two days in one as to be able to enjoy the city of Matsuyama at leisure the next day. We ended up breaking 100 miles in one day which has always been a goal of ours and the next day when we were able to enjoy Dougo Onsen and the cherry blossoms of Matsuyama.
The other bike trip of the season was a 140km trip to visit my friend Lucas’s house in Gunma which is the prefecture north of me. Lucas has been living there for over a year now and I had only ever been to see him once at his home, so it was a long overdue trip. There is also a bike path that basically connects our two houses so if you have a day to cycle it should be an easy ride…if there isn’t a headwind the whole day. The path follows the Edo river straight north with nothing surrounding the path to break the breeze. I can normally do close to 30km per hour if I am alone and the road is flat, but on this day I was doing at max 15km per hour and struggling to even do that even though it is a perfectly paved road with no hills what so ever. I brought my mate along with me and had a really nice break half way though at an old Japanese castle which comes up right against the bike path. I sat under a tree and had nothing to read or study and just sat and drank my mate thinking of how little I just sit and do nothing. It is easier to sit and do nothing when you can stare out at Mt. Fuji in the distance and you are exhausted from fighting a head wind. I got more and more lost but the scenery kept getting prettier and prettier so it wasn’t so bad. Eventually Lucas and I were able to meet up and have a nice dinner together and the next day we biked a little bit to get me to a train. It was this trip that really ended up hurting my knee and ultimately benching me for the season but it was quite the experience and if I did nothing but sit under that tree drinking mate looking out at Mt. Fuji, it would have been worth it.