the treadlehead: japan part the second

I have been remiss in my writing duties. Please forgive me- I have been ignoring my computer. I hope everyone is well and looking forward to the new year and particularly to a change in the weather in DC. Hopefully this global warming will effect some contructive communication between Isreal and Palestine as well. Ps, if anyone is looking for a potent global advocacy group, check out Avaaz.org.

more about Japan. Well, let's start with Thailand, where I met up with my Pop for a few days. We bonked around like two kids without a care in the world. Knowing that he plans on retiring there puts thailand in a whole other perspective. He bought and remodeled a little shop-house. One of those very narrow four-story affairs with the wide open shop below, and space for untold multitudes above. So now these garment workers are his new neighbors, the pepsi-bottle washing station next to the ferry dock that you get to by walking through the park where the usual couples and bums hang out will be familiar territory to me. I will grow accustomed to hearing him respectfully and firmly tell the cabbie to turn on his meter. I look forward to the short ride down to the local seafood place with three servers for every table who hover from the second you sit down through the minutes it takes me to figure out which perfectly prepared delicacy I will have today. But I don't mind because they are so sweet, and one little ahh, lady? In his pink polo shirt, is always helping me pour my beer before I'm ready. What is it today pop? Deep-fried shrimp with melon and mayonaise? (I'm not saying this one was good). The constant green papaya salad? Or my new favorite- a whole cracked crab the size of a dungeness baked in a big earthnware pot in the juices of some dark green vegetable, chunks of bacon, and glass noodles. There's probably tamarind or something in there too, it was sweet and fatty and green and deep and we ate it twice in the five days I was there.

Then we ran off to Pattaya, to visit with our friend Lo who is working as pr manager for this unusual hotel called D2. Check it out if you're going to Pattaya- great architecture, but it wasn't open when we were there. (not to mention tourism was down 70% because of the protests). I had an interesting adventure that evening involving licking icing off the birthday girl at an SM club. They don't do SM very well in Thailand- it doesn't jive with Buddhism. They don't fundamentally get it, so they look great in their cheap plastic clothes but it's just like the strip teases, not much in the way of soul. Think of all the high-heeled boots- some ladies (and it's this way in Japan too) look like they own the place, but a lot of ladies just can't figure out how to walk in heels- they're all wobbling around on the stilletto, or duck-footed in Japan. Very incongruous. As an aside, my friend Isaac has a great theory about why the ladies develop a duck-footed walk: they wear these boots, right, and last year it was all about the legwarmers up on the thigh, and then really short skirts. But then half the time they're on a bicycle, and it's cold there in winter, so they bicycle with their legs together... to protect the parts, I presume.Together we went hunting for a mercedes- at some point, Pop had taken the bus from Bangkok to Pattaya, dozed off, and awoke just in time to see a building with a glass front flashing past the window, with a really sweet old mercedes looking forlorn inside. He made a quick note of where he was, best as he could, and we boarded the same bus together this time, with a map and a notepad. Down off the interstate, he thought way too early, but there it was, a creamy yellowish green 1955? sedan. We took copious notes of major landmarks the rest of the way (“20' plastic chicken”), and retraced in a car the next day. There she be! Dirty, flat, tired, and stuck but in pretty good shape considering. Better than the 1930something jalopy outside that had the nests of many different creatures protruding from panels and torn seats. The owner was a kind man, an enthusiast who ran the tire re-treading place next to the dirty old showroom, and we ended up following him to this other place where there was a slightly newer almost as sweet chocolate brown one with a cream top. That actually ran. My brother would have been loosing his stuffing with excitement. Pop and I daydreamed about taking that car on a road trip up to Laos. In Japan, my fantasy extended to a full-on trip through Laos, China, and Korea. Then a ferry across to Japan, then through Japan, all the way exploring strange subcultures and writing a book. So that's what I'm saving up for next!

And you know one of the many reasons why I wanted to do that road trip slowly that way at some point in the future? Because I was hurtling at 300 km/hr on the Shinkanzen, which isn't even the fastest train in Japan. It's kind of like that rushing loudness in a jet plane just as it is about to take off. But for hours. But then you're at the whole other end of the country, and it's only just barely noon. But then I was trying to get to these tiny towns famous for their ceramics, right? So then I'm on a bus, or a slow train, or a subway and then a slow train and bless their hearts, most of the conductors were as thorough as possible in directing me, showing me timetables in Japanese, enthusiastically repeating the same word that I still didn't understand, but I'm sad to say that the usual travelling mishaps applied and I rarely had enough time in the places I visited. Somehow I had to balance time alone looking for great pots with time in Kyoto with my friend, not to mention that sleeping on his futoned floor was free, and sleeping on a bed of rocks in an empty youth hostel dorm in Hagi was fourty-five clams, and the museum was still closed the next day. But somehow I had an absolutely wonderful time, pretty much everywhere I went. From Tokyo to Hagi to Karatsu to Nagasaki and home to Kyoto, I met such warm welcoming people everywhere. A couple that I met there invited us to their house for dinner the night before I left, and what a delightful eve that was- It was them- she from Oz, he Japan, Isaac and I, and another couple, she from Japan, he Canada. We got to know each other, prepared food, snacked on prosciutto and drank plum sake, talked, listened to excellent music from etherial to jazz, and talked some more over a meal of oden (and long afterward too). (this is the 7-11 version of oden, which is full-on scary: Oden is a wintertime meal that involves a stove in the center of the table on which is placed a big covered pot of broth. In batches, there are a wide variety of items thrown into the simmering broth- tofu, veggies, bits of fish and oysters, that hard jelly stuff, bits of leafy veggies, and then you fish it out into a medium sized bowl in which you have put a little ponzu (citrus sauce), and in this case, shredded diakon root which is a mild radish. You put all your yummy things in the sauce, and eat it, making a pit stop at your rice bowl. Isaac and I cooked this at his house too, less fancily, and also had pickles- I love it- I am going to do it here for a dinner party sometime really soon. I have many specific memories of that night, but I think the sweetest memory is thoroughly of the heart- I was, quite honestly, a little bit shocked at how strong and unburdened the love was that evening. Within the nugget of each person was contained the paths of life that led to their presence there in that room on that night, as is so everywhere at all times- wherever you go, there you are, ya? But something about the chemistry of those people at that time was right on- a little node of energy along the path- zzzt! I carry on but it's a reference point- the way he laughed, the way they ribbed each other, the gentle question, the long warm goodbye- group hugs, and the way she held me so long, looked into my eyes like reminding me ....

so here are a few photos more: a painted door within a painted room the door to the anarchist bookstore and the store called "maps n porn", tokyo

a wall in Hagi

this was the most breathtaking art I've seen in a while- way down there at the shrine are some glass steps- they look a bit like they are ice. and then you go around the side of the hill off to your right, and the guide hands you a flishlight. one by one, you pass through a tunnel in the ground about 18" wide, straight, smooth concrete. this tunnel is about 30 feet long and the second you enter it, you hear a thrumming sound. then you emerge into a dirt cave, completely dark aside from the light glowing down from glass stairs ascending ahead of you up into-- into-- well, you can't get there, but you can imagine- the temple? what's in the temple? white light--- and thrumming.

I must write you about another fantastic exhibit that I couldn't photograph. In Tokyo, I went with my new friend Nevena to the something opera center which is a fine arts center, and they had an exhibit devoted to light called light insight, and another called open space. So among the pieces was a dark room with an orb inside it- after letting your eyes adjust for a few minutes, you could see the light emitted by cells impoding. and there was a room in which you put on 3d glasses and could operate a CAD machine projecting its image onto a large screen that curved around you. and there was a little eyeball stencil thing that flash-burned the word LIGHT into your cornea, and a special camera in room that took a photograph of your eyeball, projecting it on the screen, and then supposedly through an analogue it could read your thoughts, and people responded to the image in real time via the web. but my favorite was a 50 square foot gravity pad, which read your gravity/mass as you moved on the panels and then projected via GPS how your gravity was effecting everything around you. this is a tombstone from this amazing huge cemetary in Tokyoand this was not in the cemetary