I know, I'm terrible

I said I would update sooner, but the prospect of uploading 100 photos 5 at a time (stupid blogspot) has scared me off.

But I promise you can expect a nice post on Fushimi and Arashiyama on Sunday, in between frantic Sakubun-writing and preparation for our listening-speaking tests next week.

I've said these are my 2 favourite places in Kyoto so far, but I am going to a drag queen night at METRO tonight, so perhaps that will change.

Yokohama - A Photo Diary

"Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. I'm always missing someone or someplace or something. I'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing."

-Elizabeth Wurtzel, 'Prozac Nation'

I've been back from Tokyo for a while and already more interesting things have been happening ... so this post is going to be more of a "photo diary" of the last day of Tokyo...with a little bit of self-reflection thrown in at the end. Sunday evening, expect an update on the visit to Fushimi-Inari with Keiko and Arashiyama with Dani-chan.

Yokohama has some interesting architecture:

And the harbour made me sooooo homesick for Sydney =(

The Cosmo Clock (we rode on it later):

These red brick buildings used to be warehouses for the docks .. now they're shopping arcades.

Chucks away!

When I got back to Suginami from Yokohama I was pretty tired. But Megu said her friends from the other night (you remember, the balloon boys) had invited us over to an all night party at their house. I stayed up until 2 talking, chatting, and joking in my broken Japanese. Crawled onto a couch amid everyone's jackets and fell asleep to the soothing voice of Radio National's Alan Saunders. Woke at 7 to less pleasant noises - the snoring of one of the guys who'd fallen asleep near me.

I'm not going to lie - Tokyo had its downs for me as well. I'm not one of those people who is naturally comfortable living an insane, hectic, active lifestyle. I'd rather read a book. During the Tokyo Week, when I got home every day I would be so tired and disorientated from the crazyness that is Tokyo. Watching Lost in Translation with its Air soundtrack and scenes of Charlotte lolling around her room in the Park Hyatt doesn't really match the city that I experienced: a big, scary, loud, foreign place.

Some parts were really, really fun. But I would never want to live there. I infinitely prefer Kyoto, if only because of its pure navigability.

There's a moment in Elizabeth Wurtzel's 'Prozac Nation' where she talks about how she went to Cambridge for college and expected it to cure the depression she'd been carrying around with her since she was 12, but arrived there only to find out that it was "a place like any other only more so."Suddenly it strikes her that, even living and studying in a place with so much history and culture and vibrant intellectual life - "I am still me. Fuck."

I've been trying to find this quote on google, and it bugs me that I can't.

My situation is a little different. I didn't come to Japan with any problems I thought the place's magical properties would cure. I just wanted to come here for so long, I was so resolute and consumed with my interest in the culture in the language, it never occurred to me that I would ever feel scared or uncomfortable or embarrassed or homesick or discouraged here at all. It was going to be a Grand Adventure because I would be in My Element. Instead, the above feelings pretty much dominated my first 2 months here. Made worse by my guilt for feeling them.

And Tokyo was when I stopped waiting for Japan to reveal its magic to me.

I don't see this as negative any more though. To get out of this mindset I've had to grow up and toughen up. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Oh, poor diddums, with your scholarships and university degree and parental support and having to live in the safest country in the world in comfortable housing. Poor little middle-class white girl.

I'm beginning to sound uncomfortably like Elizabeth Wurtzel again. Oh dear, no.

But to return to my point - I've always been a day dreamer, more at home in projecting into the past or future than dealing with the here and now. I like to switch off from the present. Trouble is, when you're riding your bike on a road with cars and pedestrians, you can't be plugged into your ipod or you're going to kill somebody (probably yourself). When you're at the supermarket in a foreign country and you need to decipher the food labels to find the ingredients to make dinner you need to concentrate or you don't get dinner. When you're too tired to fetch the vacuum cleaner from two floors down to hoover up the crumbs crackers you just spilled, nobody's going to force you to go get it. You don't mind cockroaches, do you?

I'm not spoiled, I never expected anyone here to pick up the slack if I got absent-minded or lazy, but I have never in my life needed to be so conscious of my complete self-reliance. Now I constantly think responsibly. When is the rent due? When do I need to go shopping next? Now I multitask - making potato soup and doing my laundry and cleaning my room and doing homework all at once. Most importantly, I've managed to learn how to live this way without having a stress attack.

I've set a balance between schoolwork (weekdays) and sightseeing (weekends). And I've started to be more proactive in regards to the former - I organised the trip to Arashiyama with Dani today (had never been there, didn't even know the right stop to get off at, and it was a COMPLETE SUCCESS!) and intend to organise many more such trips around Japan.

I've had to become less of a control freak. I think that's been the hardest adjustment, all in all. Simultaneously being at home with being completely helpless and completely self-sufficient.

I'm definitely getting better at it. I think. But the adjustment has been a little wearying.

These things take forever, I especially am slow.

Another good thing about this change: the moments of peace and rest become even more beautiful. Like that last morning in Tokyo - when all my Japanese friends were still snoring on the lounge room floor - I stepped outside onto the little balcony and just looked around at the city in the morning. Just looking, not thinking, not planning, not worrying, not feeling anything except a deep sense of peace. And relief at going "home".

I'm going back to Kyoto City, I do believe I've had enough!

-Bob Dylan (almost)

Anyway, enough self-examination for now. Rest assured, tomorrow I will update (with many beautiful photos and videos!) of Fushimi-Inari and Arashiyama ... which might just be my favourite places in Japan.

Do you like mountains, bamboo forests, fox gods, wooded areas filled with red torii shrines, and ... MONKEYS?

Till tomorrow.

From Sadō to Ero ... The progression from 'high' to 'low' culture in Day 3 of Tokyo

First of all, apologies for the delay. I had my first big test today (15%) and was studying really hard for it all of last week. I think I did ok, all in all.

Although I was tired after Sunday's traipsing around Harajuku and Shibuya, I had to get up really early on Monday morning. The reason? Megumi's mother was part of a sadō tea ceremony group and wanted to take me along for the cultural experience.

It was pretty serious stuff - everyone needs to dress in kimino. And you have to book tickets in advance.

The reason for having to get up so early was that kimono can only be put on properly by someone who has been trained in it - that's right, Japanese people need to take classes to learn how to do it. Megumi's mother has done this (and is good enough to do it for herself as well) and I stood still for her for about an hour while she tugged and folded and secured the fabric. By the end it was a little hard to breathe, harder to sit, and forget about going to the toilet. I think the objective is to turn the woman into a little doll, stiff and immobilised with beauty.

I think Japanese women pull this off better than me though. Here's one of the assistants. I could never acquire his kind of gracefulness in kimono.

Ok - the ceremony. Because quite a lot of older Japanese ladies are into this kind of thing, and because the ceremony is done in a small traditional-style room, we had to wait for quite a while to get into the room. Meanwhile we stood and chatted in a little Japanese garden.

The obachan and obaachan (aunties and grannies) around us were very complementary of Megu and I. It's rare to see younger women interested in this kind of thing, and I suppose even rarer for them to see a foreigner there.

When we got into the room I attempted to sit in seiza (kneel) for about 10 seconds, after which my legs seized up. Being a foreigner, I was allowed to kneel with my legs curled up beside me. Megu, being Japanese, had no such option. I think she got pretty bad pins and needles.

The tea implements were of high workmanship. Part of the ceremony involves turning them around in your hands and admiring them.

On our way home, which filming a Taiko festival that was making the rounds of the neighbourhood, we get dragged to the front of the procession by the lovely ojichan uncles) who were in charge of it. That was a laugh.

Home. Lunch. Sleep. Then Megu wakes me, telling me she has booked a booth at The Lockup, and we need to go.

The Lockup is a restaurant along the lines of Arabian Rock - it's a themed restaurant (prison/mental asylum/frankenstein's lab). In the waiting area the German Expressionist vampire horror film Nosferatu was playing. We were then met by a waitress dressed in a sexy police outfit, who handcuffed one of my wrists (very enjoyable) and led us down to our booth - which resembled a prison cell (bars and all). I don't think they actually locked us in, though. As one of the guys said: That would contradict the Fire Department Safety laws absolutely.

Some of the 'themed' drinks and food (all delicious).

At one point in the night, as part of the entertainment, all the lights went out and an 'alarm' went off. 'Monsters' came and rattled on our 'bars'. And then - this scared me half to death - one of them started climbing (unnoticed) OVER THE WALL and reached towards me. I screamed for real that time.

Megu's friends were really nice, and we had a good chat and many laughs in Japanese.

After leaving lockup, some of us met up with Megu's other friends in an izakaya, a boisterous but friendly bunch of boys whose liking for dirty jokes was helped along by the alcohol they were consuming. Suddenly, one of them got out a pump and balloons and started making balloon animals.

But while they were making these balloon animals, the blue one popped. Well, some of it did. A bit of it was left.

But the ingenuity of the balloon masters was not to be thwarted. Who says Japan's education system doesn't instil creative thinking in its students?

This was handed to me, though I won't repeat with what words.

Drunk Japanese guys are just the sweetest.

I was exhausted when I got home, and needed sleep for my big trip to Yokohama on Tuesday.

Note: Wednesday being my last day in Tokyo, those of you who are getting sick of the touristy feel of these Toyko posts ... relax. For those that are dissapointed ... well ... the following plans are all in their primitive stages, but you can look forward to at least some of the following trips in the next few months:

* Okinawa - with the girls from my dorm, and potentially to stalk Rino Nakasone. (Yes, that is two links. I like Rino.) Oh, what, she lives in the States? Shimatta ...

* Hakone - To see Le Petit Prince Museum and Mount Fuji (but not to climb it ... anyone who went on Duke of Edinburgh with me in 2004 will not need to ask why)

* Lake Biwa with Japanese friends, to swim and frolic in the largest freshwater lake in Japan