adventure

Just want to tell everyone that we are ok after being stuck in the heart of the tropical storm that has torn apart the area of Sapa and Lao Cai. We tried to take a train out of Lao Cai but the train tracks and all roads out of the area are blocked by landslides. Trying to get to Hanoi by bus but it's currenly broken down. Will write about this one more later!

Vietnam

Here I am writing from the mountain village of Sapa in the far north of Vietnam, just a few marathons away from China. Met my mom last week in bustling Hanoi, spent our days there enjoying water puppet theater, chewing on braised frog legs and noodles, quaffing bia hoi in the beer halls and defending ourselves from various scamsters and hawkers. Finally escaped on a long overnight 9-hour train to the villages up north where we have encountered truly undeveloped rural life, beautiful handicrafts, torrential rain, rugged peaks and most impressively the tribal dzao and Hmong tribal folk who make and peddle their handicrafts throughout the streets and deep rice-field strewn valleys. Yesterday we were invited into a home where an old grandmother and her Hmong daughter hosted a meal for us after we met the daughter's crazed out curly-headed gnarly hippy American fellow. Our hike today down the mountainside from the town was worth it after fighting off the stomach monsters. Indescribable views were doubled by the beauty of the villagers and the crafts they were making and selling. These are amazingly strong and resilient people and they make me feel like a straight-up wuss. Coming from Japan it's nice to see a different part of Asia which is completely unique, and its contrast with the country I've been living in reminds me of the completely special place Japan has in the universe too.

Mom's holding up well and is gearing up for her new adventure, just trying to figure out what she's gotten herself into this time. I'll try to post more. Next up is the rocky Ha Long Bay.

Leaving Las Tokamachi

Sorry I haven't updated this thing. It seems that the more exciting and amazing experiences I have had in Japan, the more mundane they have become in a way. I think that's when you know it's time to try a new adventure...when even the crazy stuff becomes an everyday thing and it isn't appreciated as much as it should be.

Well the time has come and I'll be out of here in 3 days. I think part of the reason I haven't posted here in a while was being in a bit of a funk about finally leaving here and also my mind sort of left this place a little bit when I signed the papers to finish out my contract. But these last, long, tedious goodbyes have definitely reminded me the outstanding quality of the experience I've had here and the amazing nature of the people I've come to know. I will miss the kids the most as they are the most down to earth and I got along with them the best out of anyone in this country. So I will certainly be back here someday and the first people I will keep an eye out for are my students, even the crappy ones. I will miss them and I will miss this town and my friends. The term "second home" is overused sometimes but in this case it makes sense. It is the one place I've lived the longest continously outside of Chimayo and as different as I was, I was welcomed and absorbed into this community.

Starting Wednesay I'll go on a month long trip about Asia, hitting northern Thailand, a bit of Malaysia, and 2 weeks to see mom in Vietnam. If I can swing in a Hong Kong visit that would be cool too. I'll be back in Tokamachi for my 5th and final summer festival, then back in New Mexico around September 1. And after four years I've been thinking about all you friends and family I haven't seen and that I have been so terrible about keeping in touch with, now I really wanna spend some time with you. So put the beer in the fridge and keep a cold one for me. Preferably a Tecate, cut up some fresh lime. I'm coming home!

Spring

Sorry for the lack of posts. I haven't been feeling so excited about telling everyone about the cool things I'm doing, now that I know I'm leaving soon. It's a bit of a bittersweet feeling but I'm enjoying it while I can and having lots of fun. It's cherry blossom season and today I found a tree in full bloom on the edge of the rice field near my place today. Spent some time relaxing underneath it and just enjoying the moment.

Since I last posted pics, done lotsa fun stuff. It's much easier to try this web album thing, so click on the link to check out a few pics from the winter and spring.

http://picasaweb.google.com/myweinerhasafirstname/RandomBlogPicsPostedApril08

Otherwise I have been busy preparing for a music concert. I have been studying the shakuhachi, a traditional bamboo flute. I only have wooden ones though because the bamboo flutes cost as much as a car, but the learning is coming along. Sunday I'm part of a traditional music group doing the musical accompaniment for a community play. I'm joining a group with my teacher and another shakuhachi player, two shamisen, drums and some elderly singers. Not exactly a ripping rock show, but I think it's pretty cool.

errrrr...

I haven't forgotten about the blog. Just not much new recently, or not as exciting as getting attacked around a raging fire. In the past couple months these things have happened, and I'll be putting up some pics soon: Aunt Susie and Uncle Tim came up to visit for a night and we took in a ryokan - The snow festival was actually snowy this year, a bit too much actually - I skied some nice powder - a couple nice trips to Tokyo and an LC alumni event - I decided not to recontract and I'm leaving Japan in four months.

Pics coming soon.

Dosojin Festival...

Tonight was January 15, night of the annual Dosojin fire festival in Nozawa Onsen, Nagano. It stands out as one of my favorite events of the year. It is something you will never experience in any other part of the world. It is always such a cleansing event for me after the New Year.

I have written about it before I think...the madness, the sake, the fire, the chaos. This was my 4th time in a row, I haven't missed one since I've been here, and it's always been an important tradition. I'm not sure why. But you can't argue with tradition, however new or ancient. Tradition defines people more than you think. Sometimes tradition has special meaning to you, and sometimes it just makes you feel good and secure.

We had arrived just in time...the fireworks were exploding, the 42-year-old villagers were atop the heap of towering wooden logs, the 25-year-olds down below protecting their elders as is the usual custom. The other villagers were preparing a separate bonfire in which they lit torches to attack the column of wood towering over everyone.

We had positioned ourselves so we would be close to the edge of the line of torch bearers. It would become a flow of fire and chants, old as the the Shinano river. The roaming men with sake bottles tied around their necks were pouring it into my mouth until it overflowed onto my coat and down my shirt.

At first the children of the village were given a first-hand chance to run with a flaming torch towards a group of screaming men, trying to incinerate the old guys above. Normal childplay.

During this 'practice' time I befriended a local villager who was keeping the crowd at bay. I told him how much I loved this festival.

"Do you wanna try it?" he asked me. "COME ON!"

"Really?" I thought...it was my understanding that local villagers only should take part in this festival, but I had seen the occasional foreigner years before wandering down the path of flames. I thought that perhaps every year some outsiders were allowed to participate as 'special guests'. I expressed my reservations but he insisted. I admitted it was somewhat of a strange dream of mine to take part in this ritual...and thinking it might be my only chance to be in a Japanese fire battle, I agreed.

He ordered me to strip off my coat and my hat because they might get incinerated, and duck the rope with him. He handed me a bundle of dried reeds which would become my torch weapon to attack the standing tower of wooden logs (with drunk men on top, taunting me to try to burn them to the ground, with local chants).

When the children finished their enthralling encounter with fire and danger, the 'real men' went running and raging toward the main bonfire, lighting their torches. I was pushed into the fray. I lit my torch as naturally as I could and started a charge towards the defenders of the wooden tower, like I was in an Olympic stadium starting the ceremonies, or a villager trying to kill Shrek. All I remember was flames, punching, screaming, crunching. One of the defenders had defeated me and extinguished my fiery weapon. I had to move to the side of the tower to recive a new bundle of dry reeds.

I reached up and the second I caught a new bundle flying through the air, I heard an angry scream to my right. I looked over to see spit flying and teeth gnashing as an open hand connected with the side of my face. A large drunken local punched me in the head like Mike Tyson trying to win the heavyweight belt. My winter hat flew off my head and my ears started to ring.

All around me was fire, heat, shouting, anger, swirling animosity. It felt primal. I felt as though the universe was being reborn in my own Big Bang.

"FUCK OFF! IT'S A JAPANESE RULE! GET AWAY!" He screamed at me in Japanese. I was stunned and not sure how to react. The beating had knocked all words and logical thought out of my consciousness, Japanese, English or any language.

I knew immediately that I shouldn't have ducked those ropes, invited or not. This festival was not mine to participate in. I had known that it was only for locals, but felt like I had priveleges after being invited in. Every day you feel like an honored guest here, and I had naively thought that as usual I had special access because I was a foreigner and perhaps exempt from the rules. I tried to explain that I had been invited there and hadn't snuck in as they thought, but my brain was ringing. I put my hands up and backed off, but was pushed hard away from the fire. Some other guys had to hold the first guy back from going at me further. Another man in a helmet screamed at me and elbowed me in the ribs. "JAPANESE RULE!"

I had gotten stuck between the rock of hospitality and the hard place of traditionalism --- and traditionalism won with a fist to my head.

Something about big fires brings out the angry caveman in people, and though I had been pumelled by them , I was actually invigorated. Never had I seen a Japanese person stand up for something as fiercely as those men had, drunk and violent or not. Never in this country have I experienced such anger and commitment. I immediately gained a great deal of respect for those who stand up for tradition and loyalty. That was not my place to be. That was not my event. I guess I had felt some kind of entitlement for being there a few years in a row and felt that being invited in was some kind of reward, but hundreds of years of tradition should trump that. The man who invited me in to the chaos was either too eager to share his culture, or too eager to see my get decked by the Hulk.

Soon after I saw another foreigner get pushed out. "Japanese only!" they shouted at him.

"FUCK YOU, you racists! You are fucking racists!" he shouted back. "Can you believe these racists?"

It was his first time there and he had only been in Japan for a few weeks. He had ducked the ropes and hadn't been invited in.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and held him back from swinging at the locals. "Listen, it's tradition. You have to be a local. This isn't racism. It's just fucking tradition. Relax".

Eventually he got the point. This is not a college application, this is a mountain fire festival. No affirmative action here. This is a place were tradition actually still drives the community, so respect that. No matter how much a foreigner wants to have an authentic Japanese experience, this is not our place, and this is not our time. We can gain respect through our humility and willingness to understand, but we cannot expect to be fully embraced in situations like this where the bloodline goes back ages. It's just the truth and those who scream racism are simply making themselves look as narrow and blind as those who might actually be racist.

I watched the flames burn down and the tensions subside with the heat. Everybody was smiles and cheers as the embers burned their sorrows into the moonlit night. Amongst those embers were the remnants of my hat, my meager sacrifice for a healthy and happy 2008 in this place I know and love, but will never be my own...

The local stuff...

There are a millions interesting things I could write about over the past couple months, including a trip to Okinawa for Christmas to see the fam, a nice Japanese New Years in Tokamachi, some good skiing and some good times.

But I'll just write about what I did this Thursday night, tonight. Nothing interesting, just a night across the street.

My car was parked in again so instead of going out for dinner I skipped over to the very local izakaya. It had been a long time. I'm usually not sure what to expect when I go in there. It is usually a crapshoot of local izakaya food - like whale blubber or pig guts - or a strange conversation or experience. But that's what makes it worthwhile. It's always something to remember.

I went in and only one guy was sitting at the counter, the owner and president of my favorite sake company, Tenjinbayashi. He is an older man with a sullen face, and always looks lonely. I've never seen him accompanied by another person. He is outwardly gruff and cold looking. The wrinkles in his face are deep and his eyes are heavy and sunken. He is not someone you would approach from appearance alone.

Yet I've always liked him. He seems like a very natural man to me. There is no outward illusion or effort. He just is who he is. My main memory of him is when he gave my dad and I a tour of his factory. He wasn't outwardly friendly but just showed us around. He tried to explain things to me that he knew I probably wouldn't understand. At the end of the tour he gave us a sampling of his finest sake, then gifted me with 4 bottle of his finest reserves, worth hundreds of dollars. He was a kind man who didn't care if he was seen as so. His actions were what spoke.

Tenjinbayashi is the local Nakajo firewater and it's made down the street. It's the only stuff I ever bring home. It's turned into a fierce and heartfelt brand loyalty.

Recently I realized that I've been living in the Bordeaux of Japanese sake and I don't know anything about the stuff, other than the tours of the local brewery. So I found a book about nihonshu in English and started to study up on it. I learned some terminology and the different kinds of sake there are out there. I didn't know it, but the world of sake can be as over detailed and snobby as the world of wine.

When I saw him in the bar I wanted to ask some questions like a student meeting a master. We exchanged New Year's greetings because it's been a while sinced we drank together. After that I started asking about this type and this type of sake. What rice is it made from? What's your specialty? What are you drinking now?

I had ordered a beer but of course he had a flask and cup of sake in front of him, and I was thinking it was probably the good stuff. He was a brewmaster and owner of a well known sake company, he must know what he's doing.

"Nah, I'm drinking the cheap stuff! No one around here can afford the stuff I make," he said.

I was surprised. The stuff he was drinking probably came out of a box. It was like a master microbrewer drinking Bud Light.

"Fair enough," I thought. Even the cheap stuff is pretty good when it's warm. He ended up treating me to four flasks of it (that's why I like going there...one way or another there is always free sake in my glass). I ate some local fare with it and started talking with him. With local older guys in an izakaya, it's not so much talking as listening. Depending on how thick their dialect is, it's not so easy to understand. Older guys seem to have their own garbled language, and when they've been drinking it sounds like they are speaking with a mouth full of burning hot peanut butter.

What I like about the sake guy is that he talks to me like a local. Part of the problem with talking to locals is they assume you only understand 5% of what they are saying, which is sometimes true, but they let the differences in our race backgrounds precede the possibility for natural conversation. I always appreciate it when people talk to me like they don't care where I'm from; Mr. Sake-man always talks to me like he talks to his old drunk friends, and I enjoy it. I don't always understand, and it often turns into background noise as though his words are coming from a distant radio, but I still nod and agree and somehow we communicate. This is real local Japanese inaka life. We ate and we drank and we carried on. We laughed even if I didn't quite know what we were laughing at.

After hours of this I walked home through the thick Nakajo fog. The cheap sake clouded my head like the thick local accent he spoke. He was just happy to have someone to talk to and share his company on a foggy weeknight, and I guess I was too.

in my eyes

There are moments when I wish there was a machine that could transport what I see through my eyes in this country to people back home. I wish I could open my eyes at any random time and have other people see the strange things I see, especially people who have never experienced Japan. I think they wouldn't know what to think.

There were several of those moments this weekend, a classic inaka countryside Tokamachi weekend.

I open my eyes on Friday night and I'm in Akiyamago way up in the mountains with the old fishing club guys. We are renting a cottage up in the cold, drinking beer that is cooled in the snowpack and sitting around a campfire. It's 10 guys who are feeling lucky for the chance to be away from their jobs and social and family pressures. We are full of chirashi sushi and grilled mochi. Our bodies are warmed because we just snuck into the rotenburo outdoor bath which is sitting on the edge of a cliff. As we stumble through the snow, I spill my sake all over myself and the guys laugh at me. We jump in the steaming baths, and looking at the stars someone mentions it's the first time they've seen Orion this year. Another mentions how calming it was to see the first snowfall. These guys love the outdoors as much as I do. I close my eyes.



I open my eyes the next day and I'm hiking through the woods. I'm with Kanazaki-san and he's teaching me how to hunt for edible mushrooms to cook in miso soup. We are only finding every kind of mushroom that will kill us, but finally find some tasty nameko mushrooms growing on a fallen log. There are only about 20 but it's a nice crop. They are slimy and look like slugs' asses but I pick them anyway. I close my eyes.

I open my eyes the next day and it's 8 a.m. A guy I don't know is offering me a beer backstage at a local traditional music concert that I´m volunteering for. I accept because there is no other choice (though I rudely refuse the cigarette), and it marks the first time this year that I've had dried squid and Asahi Super Dry for breakfast. As I enjoy breakfast, I close my eyes.

I open my eyes and there is fake dry ice fog pouring around my ankles. I am holding on to a pine tree prop. A bunch of screaming men in feudal style kimono are running around in front of me, swinging swords. One of them whizzes by my ear. At stage left are a dozen old women with their faces painted white, wearing colorful kimono and strange hats. They wave at me. On stage right are a couple of my students waiting to do their dragon dance. I close my eyes.

I open my eyes and I'm standing surprised on stage with a spotlight in my face in front of hundreds of people and a microphone in my face. Unbeknownst to be, I'm suddenly interviewed by the event's MC in some kind of difficult Japanese. I came to volunteer backstage but because I'm the foreigner there, I'm automatically the special guest, even though the mayor and some famous musicians are in attendance. I answer in one word sentences, not quite sure what the question was. Some people are silent and some people laugh. Not a very good sign. I still don't know what's happening and they push me off stage. I close my eyes.

I open my eyes at the after party and I've just finished playing percussion with a group onstage. A very elderly woman in a kimono is saying something to me, about 2 inches from my face. She is speaking with vigor and she nearly spits in my mouth. I have to focus and keep nodding and accepting the beer she is pouring in one glass as my other hand accepts sake poured by an old man wearing a leopard print headband on my left. He is saying something too, about how I should find a wife because I'm getting old, and he makes me chug the sake before I can put the cup down, which is immediately refilled anyway. These are my new friends. The mayor is now doing karaoke on stage and everyone claps. A guy who looks like the Japanese Harry Caray is eating some fish.

The weekend's done and I'm going to bed, I'll close my eyes hoping to dream of something slightly ordinary.

I farm rice because I am.

It's the peak of the rice harvest up in the mountains and a week back I was blessed enough to finally do something I've always wanted to do...cut rice.

May not sound too enthralling to the average 21st century dude, but it's something I've been meaning to do because it is such an important part of Japan. Not just rice, but the role that the cultivation of rice plays in the whole national identity and source of Japanese cultural traits that have been developed for ages.

There are lots of things about Japanese culture that can be explained by one important point, and that is the emphasis placed on social harmony and a group mentality. Half the things that used to drive me crazy in this country make a lot more sense to me now that I realize they are done so as not to upset other people or the social balance of harmony and group interdependence. That's why people stay at work till 9 p.m. (not cuz there's lots to do, but cuz there are other people still there), that's why people show emotional restraint instead of saying or doing something brash, that's why people stay silent instead of expressing themselves as individuals, that's why my students won't answer a question unless they have a conference about it with friends first. And ultimately, this group consciousness goes back to the time when people worked together and really depended on each other to put out a good harvest. Cultivating rice and cultivating it well as a group is often what has made Japan Japan. Everything is done as a group, for the group.

So that's why I wanted to do it. I wanted to check out the roots of the culture. And I was lucky that my good old friend/Japanese mama Haruno Sato and her husband invited me for a harvest, along with my 9 old Nonaka students (this is the school that shut down last year after 130 years or so of being open).

So this is how it went down...I met the kids at the Sato's 250-year-old Edo period home, which at one point housed a family of 20 people 100 years ago but has dwindled down to the old couple and a 92-year old Grandma. This family and this home was one of the very original Niigata mountain families, and that house and their bloodline in the area is as old as the hills. I was told I am the first foreigner to have stepped foot in that house or those rice fields in hundreds of years.

They took me way up a dirt road into the hills and a clear, beautiful fall day. Even way up into the reaches of these little valleys, every tract of flat land is used for rice farming. To my right were a bunch of rice fields that had been freshly cut, and to the left were a bunch that were ripe for harvest. These were the Sato's rice fields. I asked them how long they had had any of the given rice fields, and I was told as long as the family has been in the area...they have been passed down to each generation for 250 years.

I was given a pair of gloves and a freshly sharpened sickle, as were a bunch of hyper elementary kids. I was told to start in the corners and start cutting each clump of rice stalks by hand, the traditional way. The kids got interested when they saw me doing it and they all pitched in, swinging sickles and evacuating frogs from the mud along the way.

Soon after, technology took over and Sato-san drove the Combine harvesting machine in. This essentially did the work of 100 people in no time, cutting the whole field with precision within about 15 minutes.

And of course because I was the guest, and perhaps because he didn't know better, he invited me up onto the very expensive machine and taught me how to drive it. I put my hat on, sneered a little, and got to work on the big rice zamboni.

Before long I had cleared the rest of the field, the rough grains were poured into a truck, and it was time to eat. They ended up building a fire in the middle of a cleared field and cooked a huge barbecue feast out in the open as we enjoyed the sunlight. I played with the kids between cooking sessions, and we feasted on meat and veggies and fresh miso soup until we almost popped. Then we played rice field tag and rice field baseball. It was an awesome day.

I learned that what we had harvested will most likely be kept for their own consumption, given to neighbors, and then the rest sold to Japan Agriculture as the famed Koshihikari brand, the most famous, delicious and expensive rice in Japan that only comes from this part of the country. Rice of this quality is prestigious and is no doubt what has bouyed this family and whole community over so many centuries.

Here's pics!

fishing

Last weekend I took my 2nd trip with the local 'fishing club', which consists of a bunch of older married guys who use the excuse of fishing to get away and drink beer and eat all the fish the one or two guys who actually fished had caught.



Yes, that's fresh, and yes, I ate that. Kiss me.


Getting the catch ready to grill around the fire. That image of a bunch of fish head first around the fire, on a stick, is a standard local sight.

GO CUBS GO

Artsy Schmartsy Kyoto Pics

More Artsy Kyoto Pics

Wabi-Sabi in Kyoto

posting up

When I was home this summer I talked to lots of people who said they either read my blog, or want to. Never realized people read this thing other than my mom. So part of the reason I haven't written so long is that I felt the need to write things I think other people will find interesting, even though I don't think they are that special anymore...and there's just a million things I've been doing recently, so if I write about just a couple, then the other ones get left out, and I hate being so exclusive. So looks like what I'll have to do is just start posting about occasional random happenings and thoughts, otherwise I'll never get anything done.

SO...

Let me tell you about fireworks. Fireworks in Japan are a religion. They are less like the omnipresent, calm and peaceful shinto and buddhist religions, and more like the world's fanatical fundamentalist psycho religions. People here do insane and ridiculous things to see fireworks. They will stand in sideways typhoon rain. They will sit in muddy rice fields. They might even resort to violence, including pushing and trampling. I've been poked in the ribs by countless old lady's umbrellas at fireworks shows, and for good reason. The fireworks are pretty impressive and they'd rather be damned than let some tall foreigner block their view.

Recently I finally got up close for the Katakai fireworks, which sports the biggest firework in the world. The shell for the thing is like 5 feet in diameter and the explosion is almost a freakin' kilometer across. On top of that there are a million other huge, loud, booms and pretty colors. With a smile on your face and a beer in your hand, it is the epitome of the Japanese summer.

Here's some pictures from August and September: Obon, a ryokan trip to Gunma, festivals, fireworks. Summer around here is the best. Actually, summer everywhere is the best. Unless it's winter, that's the best too. Actually I like fall. Anyway, pics...