kyoto, ichiban!!

kyoto is a city with more temples per square foot than i've ever seen. evidently during world war two, this one guy, the us secretary of war, who had been to kyoto before and was "very much impressed by its ancient culture," took it off the list for the atomic bomb. it wasn't exactly out of the pure goodness of his own heart, but this is one of the reasons that kyoto's historic buildings remain incredibly well preserved. it's a gorgeous city. dripping with humid summer heat, it's modern urban japan meets temples, shrines and gardens crowded with people from all walks of life, all either bathing in temple fountains or seeking out shaved ice or mixed vanilla and green tea ice cream.

amidst the beauty of the city, met some hella cool people:

jan-- a sweedish dude who has seen the knife live and kept telling me outrageous things about sweden. (eg. so in sweden it's required by law that if any kid wants to, the school must hire a teacher and block out a number of hours per week to learn the language of his ancestry, or home country. this with the simple rationale-- if a kid knows the language, he can communicate with his parents better and will do better academically. um, yes people.)

taro-- a guy who is 75% kyushu and 25% who knows. he's spent a chunk of his youth in the states and is basically bi-national. he's the kind of guy who's got deep thoughts for everyday things and a kind and open-minded approach to life. he's also got a serious obsession with cro-magnons, and old japanese punk band.

shin-- a novelist with big ideas and a smile (wink wink) for every traveler who comes in the door at tour club or budget inn. he feels me on wwoof because he wwoofed in canada, when he was living there for a year. watch out for his mad skills in a forthcoming novel...

and i almost forgot. i fulfilled one of my main wishes for coming to japan in the summertime. obon odori. aapip ngec folks, we once did a go around about our favorite summer memories, and i don't know why one of my favorite summer memories completely slipped my mind. obon is basically the japanese version of day of the dead. as i kid, in the summertime, i used to show up at the local temple to practice obon odori (dancing), which essentially are a short series of slow simple steps repeated over and over again in a large circle, around music and a taiko drum. usually they're something like, the fisherman's dance or the miner's dance (imagine fishing moves or coal mining moves here). the best was at the end of practice when a lady would call out to the kids that it was time for popsicles, and we would all run over with our zoris clacking on the concrete.

well, so turns out that they actually do obon odori in japan. there was a night of obon odori in kyoto, complete with beer, dango (mochi on sticks), and different teams of local folks, all in yukatas, ready to dance. and so i jumped in...

check out more of my kyoto fotos.

ZASO.

it's the middle of a humid july in the outskirts of kyoto and i'm knee deep in mud. i'm wrentching foot long weeds out of the ground, between rows of long green rice stalks. every time i make another step, my foot comes down in a slow squish and water dancing spiders skake away frantically, and reddish brown salamanders squirm out of view. i'm head to toe covered, long sleeved working shirt and pants, boots to my knees, gloves, sleeve protectors... so sweat is dripping down my face.

and every time i pull a weed, the roots make a satisfying sound as they get sucked out of the mud.

so, this is wwoof. hard work? beautiful scenery? incredible organic food? an amazing cultural experience? something like indentured servitude? well, yes, possibly all of the above.

so there aren't leeches, as i had worried about, but what i didn't think about were the SPIDERS. and there are hella spiders. but strangely, with the uh, higher mission of weed pulling somehow they're not even bothering me. and the other day when i say a long snake slither out of the ride paddy into the the grass, i just laughed.

anyway, all i have to say is daaang, people in the countryside work hard!

and the people who are working the hardest-- my hosts, kei-san and setsu-san. kei-san is a loud and friendly guy in his sixties who twenty years ago left his job as a salaryman to pursue this dream of having his own country farm. now he has 4 tamboo (rice paddies), and in addition to receiving woof-ers they also take in those looking for a getaway from city life to spent a night or two for what they call an inaka taiken ("country-life experience").

setsu-san saw her son swinging from a vine under a massive tree and was inspired to start making baskets. the first basket was completely round, and then as the craft evolved, her baskets got funkier and more creative. now their living room is filled with vine crafts of different kinds and sizes-- baskets, vases, necklace pendants and "shadow lamps" that cast incredible dark shapes on the walls.

kei-san's english is kind of like a better version of my nihongo-- several key words and verbs strung together without any attention to grammar. so basically we talk in tarzan speak to each other. my first day on the rice paddy:

kei-san: kore wa RICE (pointing at the rice stalks). kore wa zaso desu (pointing at basically identical looking plant). english, WEED. japanese, ZASO. very same, ne? look--rice ga HAIR aru. zaso ga NO HAIR. you see? no hair, ne?

me (the whole time nodding): ah, hai, hai, yeah i see. wakarimashita.

and somehow we get by.

after working an hour and a half, kei-san will call out, "stefanie-san! breaktime!" and i trudge over across the bank now filled with fresh muddy weeds up to the top of the incline. we sit on two overturned milk crates there with a couple of bottles of water, munch on some sembe (rice crackers), and chat. the view is a tall narrow valley, with two sleep mountains on each side, covered in perfectly aligned, tall skinny trees. the tamboo (rice fields) glow an irridescent green, wind blowing slow waves through the fields, and nestled deep in the valley are a handful of old traditional style japanese houses, whose bright tile rooves glisten like the backs of fish in the sun.

check out more of my photos on flickr.

sugoi, na!

i'm going to start off by bringing you all up to speed. here's some stuff from my first 10 days in tokyo.

tsukiji fish market
...jet lagged and out of synch i woke up early saturday morning to wander through the tsukiji fish market, the 24 hour market where all the fish arrives when it gets to the city. i meandered in circles through piles of fresh tuna, salmon, urchin, octopus and anything else fish related you could possibly imagine-- dried fish, barrels of shaved bonito. and then a ton of other things, like little pickled veggies of all colors, candy, teas. the perimeter was lined with little ramen and kare-raisu stands where you could pick up a cheap meal...

the london bus
...last night rie and i went to a party on a london bus. it felt very absurd (maybe typically tokyo?) and was a lot of fun. some friends of hers rented out this big red double decker bus to drive around the city for a joint birthday thing, and we arrived on the second story of this bus to find little packaged meals and a slew of japanese young folks who were mostly linked in some way to fashion or design, all dressed up in sparkly, brightly colored or wacky clothing. we joy-rode around the city with mixed drinks in hand for a couple of hours and then got dropped off in the same place we were picked up...

family, friends & japanese hospitality
...my mom's cousin, yuko-san, is a sophisticated and stylish woman in her sixties, who speaks fluent english and has a great taste for food, wine and international travel. she has totally taken me in and brought me all over the city. in fact we just got back from going to a really nice sushi restaurant at the top of the tokyo press club and i am totally stuffed. one of the highlights was ika/squid with shiso leaf and ume..

...aika is a hella cool girl. she's a skate dancer and approaches life with a vivid and free spirit (as jenny likes to say). we kicked in asakusa, drank it up at an izakaya, and danced the night away at a soul club here in tokyo...

...i met keiko on the plane to japan and we ended up kicking it in tokyo. she just got back from living in nyc and is down with the fugees too. we wandered around harajuku and then met up with yuko-san for a luxurious rooftop hanabi (fireworks) party. the metros were packed with folks in yukata, and we almost got stuck inside...