Blog – Page 76

August 4, 2003August 2, 2006

A night under a tent of lanterns, open enough for me

Saturday evening there was a local festival a few blocks from where we live, so we strolled on over there to check it out. It turned out to be a Bon-Odori, or Bon Dance festival. The modest festival was held in a dirt lot across from a kindergarten (perhaps a parking lot by day?), but it could’ve been a large boat rocking back and forth on a river in a Suzuki Harunobu woodblock print for all I knew. That is to say, there was something ethereal, something dreamlike, about the evening.

The colored lanterns, they stay with me now a couple of days removed. I don’t know what it was about them, but even now I’m hard-pressed to think of a more beautiful image than the strings of cylindrical shaped paper lanterns in blues and oranges and greens and reds that ascended from the four corners of the lot up to the central tower structure, forming their own kind of open-air tent. That’s appropriate, perhaps, for in the midst of this traditional Japanese event I couldn’t help but think back to the carnivals and state fairs of my childhood in Hawaii. And perhaps deep down there was something resonating with the Obon festivals of the Japanese-American community in Hawaii, though I honestly don’t really remember going to any of those when I was a kid. But maybe I did, and the latent memories were called up the other night. Who knows?

Sadly, the digital camera was not able to capture the colors of the lanterns as I saw them, but perhaps that just adds to the dream. The evening became even more magical when we discovered that from where the festival was, we had a clear view of the fireworks being launched over the Arakawa River at the dual Todabashi and Itabashi Fireworks festivals. A bit too far for the digital, but I managed to grab a few half-decent shots, thanks to a relatively unimpeded view.

Fireworks booming down this way, Bon music and Taiko drums resounding down this way, it occurred to me that perhaps I was at a nexus of something that was uniquely of Japan, yet connected to flickering memories and resonances particular to me. While I chose not to participate, but rather to photograph and observe from the periphery, I still felt not on the outside looking in, but rather a part of the festivities, in my own way. Kind of like those beautiful lanterns making the shape of a tent in my imagination, but a tent not enclosed, and not smothering.

(Click on the photos for the gallery.)

August 3, 2003

As Kaika turns…

Kaika, sleeping, July 31, 2003: click for larger image (28K)

Kaika has moved on to the I’m-going-to-try-and- turn-over-on-my-own phase. Without fail he starts turning from his position lying on his back, to the right. I wonder if this is any indication of whether he’ll be right- or left-handed. He’s also, for the first time, experimenting with sleeping on his side, as this photo taken by Naoko with the cellphone shows. I’m the kind of person that gets queasy at any thought related to the cutting off of circulation, so because he can turn himself over but can’t yet extricate his right arm out from under his body, I tend to get very paranoid that his arm is going to fall off!

July 30, 2003

Singin’ in the rain doesn’t play in Japan very often

Rain through windshield, Kamakura, May 31, 2003: click for larger image (55K)

It has all of a sudden started to pour down rain outside, which I can hear even though my ears are covered with headphones piping in some noisy John Zorn via Winamp. So I figure this is as good a time as any for a “rain post” I’ve written in my head a few times.

The rain is an indication that, despite it just having turned July 30, the season known as tsuyu, or “rainy season,” is still upon us. I don’t have the exact date, but tsuyu should have ended a long time ago. Certainly last year I don’t remember it extending into July, let alone August, which it is bordering on now. I heard the other day that last July, there were something like 25 days where the temperature in the Tokyo area topped 30°C. This year, there have only been 2 or 3 days over the 30° mark. nanka okashii naa (“hmmn, something strange is going on”).

When I mention to Naoko how weird it is, she always comes back with “global warming,” and I come back with my tired “well, if it’s global warming, then why is it still relatively cool.” (I have to admit that my knowledge about Global Warming is woefully inadequate, not extending much beyond knowing that the U.S. was one of the few countries not to sign the Kyoto Protocol.)

Whatever the reason for the strange weather patterns, I’m sure this will all come back to haunt us, and at any moment around the corner a big fat stinking hot and humid summer will emerge to exact its revenge. But for now, I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. I am simply loving this weather. I still need to bring my sweat-hanky with me to work, because while the typical summer humidity isn’t as bad as it was last year, it hasn’t entirely disappated either. And I’ve changed my wardrobe to thin short-sleeve shirts and thin slacks. But, still, when I wake up in the morning and see that it is grey outside, as it has seemed to be every morning this summer, I do a little jig inside. And if it’s raining, I’m all the more happier.

While I’m sure others in Japan are pleased that so far the heat has been kept at bay, I sadly suspect that I’m one of the few people in Japan who is very happy at how much rain we’ve had this summer. I’ve tried of late to refrain from making sweeping generalizations about large groups of folk, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and generalize that almost to a person, the Japanese can’t stand rain. At least, I have yet to meet one who said he/she liked it, or at the very least, that the rain didn’t bother him/her one way or the other. (Naturally I haven’t done any scientific polling on this, but I do meet a lot of Japanese people through my job, and weather comes up in conversation with just about all of them — I’m an English teacher in case you didn’t know).

When I try to determine the reasons behind this aversion, the reason most often put forth runs something like “Because my clothes will get wet, and I don’t like the feeling of wet clothes sticking to my body.” Fair enough I suppose, although personally I can’t see the big deal, and anyway, if you’re carrying an umbrella, how wet can your clothes possibly get? Speaking of carrying an umbrella, this is one thing that no Japanese seems to leave home without. (There’s a lot of money to be made by a raincoat manufacturer if they could convince the conformist Japanese female consumer that such an accessory was fashionable). And they do silly things with them, like ride their bikes with one hand on the handlebars and one hand holding an umbrella aloft over their heads. (Not sure if it’s true, but someone told me this was illegal, but you could’ve fooled me, as just about everyone does it).

Naoko says that if I grew up in a place that had so much rain, I wouldn’t like it either. But I remind her that I grew up in a valley in Honolulu (Nuuanu Valley), and that in said valley it rained just about every day, or such is my memory of it. At any rate, I got more than my fair share of rain, more than my fair share of rain-caused inconveniences, and more than my fair share of sticky wet clothes, growing up.

So, whether it’s the sticky clothes or some other reasoning I’m not privy to, their ain’t no singin’ in the rain here in Japan. This morning, I thought I would let Kaika experience rain for the first time, to see what his reaction would be, so I took him outside. It was only the lightest of a drizzle, and only about 5 seconds of it at that, but he was decidedly non-plussed about it, although his eyes did dart up at one moment as if to find out “where the hell did that come from?” However, later when recalling this to my mother-in-law, her response was that ubiquitous Japanese utterance of pity, kawaisou (“The poor thing”). Sigh.