Sunset in Morioka

Sunset in Morioka
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

Spent a lovely spring day (3/22/08) in Morioka, with our friend, Ben Lee.
A nice sunset closed out our visit. Click on the pictures to go to flickr and see more pictures from our trip.

二 二九 (229)

Aomori Prefecture, where I live, is noted for agriculture. Particularly famous throughout Japan are Aomori apples and GARLIC.

So on Sunday, Chris rolls in from Snowboarding at Hakkoda, with a bag of garlic. The garlic came from coworker and fellow foodie, Crocker.

Generally, in keeping with the Japanese tastes, garlic in Japan is mild. Mild to the point of flavorlessness. So when I opened the bag and got a whiff, I was thrilled. If my schnozz was Japanese, the whiff would have been noisome. But thank goodness, my nose is not Japanese and neither is my palate. Redolent, if not down right stinky, stubby fat bulbs of fresh garlic. Hooray! Thanks Crocker!

I lopped the tops off the seven bulbs, stuck them in a baking dish, gave 'em a squirt of olive oil and a roast at 350 for an hour. The I proceeded to eat three bulbs' worth of the roasted cloves, hot from the oven -- squishy and nutty and slightly carmalized and totally delicous.

My breath is so bad right now, I am making my own eyes water. S'alright.

One of the great things about the Japanese language is opportunities for wordplay/puns because of the amount of homonyms present in the language. Actually, I think of a former co-worker, John Jenkins, whenever I see/hear puns or wordplays. The two of us once spent almost an entire afternoon during a slow day at work, making lots of puns, each more obnoxious than the last. There was a pun involving brassieres and brasseries that was a killer. I can't take credit, that one was all John's.

So puns. And Garlic. One of the most well known brands of garlic around here is the 229 brand.

2 is "NI" ( nee or "as in the knights who say") and 9 is "KYU" (kyuu). So 229 could be pronounced as two-two-nine, or in Japanese, ni - ni - kyu ( 二 二九 ). You could also say two hundred and twenty nine, or nihyakunijyukyu ( 二百二十九), but then the joke wouldn't work!

Here's the "punchline" (aside from the fact that I ate so much roasted garlic that I have heartburn right now):

The word for garlic is ninniku (にんに in hiragana; ニンニク in katakana; 大蒜 or 蒜 in Kanji), which sounds very much like ni-ni-kyu, or two-two-nine (229). So the brand is literally "Garlic Garlic." Clever bit of marketing to select name with a built in mnemonic/catchphrase.

Itty Bitty Bag

Itty Bitty Bag
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

Because cloth/kimono were/are expensive, there is a long tradition of recycling them (going right back to Edo Japan!). Kimono might be recut for a child, made into a haori, or otherwise altered to extend the life of the fabric. Every piece, right down to the littlest, was reused. Pieces of fabric which were smallish might be made into doll's clothes, small drawsting purses, beanbags, hair decorations or ornaments/charms. This little coral bag probably started out life as a haori. I got the fabric in a scrap grab-bag and sewed it up into a teeny drawstring pouch. It contains my ojami , which are small beanbags used in a traditional Japanese girls' juggling game, called Otedama (Te is the Japanese word for hand). Behind the itty-bitty bag it is a larger bag (containg my larger and less-traditional purple suede gballz juggling balls), made from a panel from a pre-WWII kimono I picked apart (there was too much damage to wear it).

When I see Eiko-san in a few days, I'll have to ask her if she knows how to do Otedama.

Haikyo

Haikyo is the Japanese word for "ruins." Not to be confused with the Haikyo that is a talent agency representing Seiyu (voice actors for movies, video games, anime, etc).

When we first got to Misawa, I was amazed by the abandoned buildings that seemed to be such a pervasive feature. I always had this perception of Japan as the land of neat and tidy. Living here quickly disabused me of that notion.

Abandoned crap is all over Japan and said crap includes but is not limited to fridges, cars, roads, hotels, apartments, office buildings, roller coasters and even an entire island.

Abandoned places are prevalent and captivating enough that a specialized kind of domestic tourism dedicated to it has arisen; Haikyo tourism is popular enough to warrant several guidebooks and to generate interest in artistic photography of the ruins. There's plenty of websites about Haikyo too, featuring images of beautifully decaying places grimly surrendering to entropy.

I get the whimwhams just looking at the pictures.

Surface Below - Photography of Gunkanjima Island by American photographer Ross McDermott

Deflation Spiral - Folio Number 9 contains my favorite images.

Shinichiro Kobayashi - published by the ubiquitious house of Kodansha. Hokkaido Island is the stingray-shaped island at the top. Directly below that is the prefecture/area where I live.

Ruined Japan

all-nite diner

all nite diner all nite diner all n te dine al n te di er all nite din r

(sign on the fritz) coughing up neon into the 3am world

two souls stagger in

(been up all night)

throw themselves into the naughahyde nirvana

of a back-corner booth

peering over menus

(fingerprinted dogeared)

she flings back her head

and laughs

(in utter delight)

the sound

ricochets--

(an amusing bit of artillery)

--off dinged aluminum walls

and day-old donuts--

takes a spin on the ceiling fan

zooms down the counter

rattles the dishes

whiplashes the necks

of the other patrons

(wotthehellzofunny?)

but mostly

it

just

breaks

his heart.

Slipped

I've lost ten pounds. The weather has been cold.
Doesn't sound like they have any relation to each other but they do.
My fingers have gotten thinner. The cold makes them even more so.

As a result, my custom-made, one-of-a-kind wedding band slipped off at some point today.

We tore up the house and tomorrow we'll go to the Base Exchange and ask if it has turned up.

The ring was insured but how can I ever really replace it?

Cross-Eyed Ninja Snacks

MORE ABOUT THIS ON FLICKR!
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

NINJA.
SNACKS.

Imo Mobile

So I was working on my computer and I heard this shrill, high-pitched whine. I'm thinking "awwwmigod, my hard-drive is going...no, wait, awwwmigod, Chris' hard-drive is going!" Yet I can't seem to pinpoint exactly where the sound is coming from.

Then I realized - It's the IMO (sweet potato) saleman! Luckily, I had my camera ready to go and captured the moment, complete with steam whistle. The Imo business must be good, he upgraded his truck! Or maybe this is a different vendor than the one a wrote about long ago.

If I hadn't just finished a snack, I would have run out and got an Imo. They're really good--steamed and sweet and starchy and will totally burn the top of your mouth if you're a greedy pig and don't wait for them to cool down a little bit. Not that it's ever happened to me.

So here's the whistle, with a truck attached:

Pussywillows

Two bucks can buy a lot of happiness, particularly if "happiness" comes in the form of five-foot long pussywillow switches. Technically, I bought 5 dollars worth, since I purchased two bunches and the entire time I was smiling so hugely my face hurt.
Pussywillows remind me of spring as much as they remind me of my godmother's house, with it's unkempt flowerbeds (her husband died years before, and he did all the gardening) and decrepit, falling-down shed. Unlike my mother's neatly ordered beds, I could tromp though these unmade messes, sit down in the midst of them, and even better, pick the flowers. The beds were scattered randomly throughout her huge yard (you don't see yards like that anymore), and there were dead spots, tussocks, and the general creep towards entropy that ensues when the groundsman is no longer around to fight, tame, and otherwise control nature. Along the edges of these slowly reverting beds, as well as along the boundaries of my godmother's chaotic yard, were pussywillows.

Unlike the huge, pink(!) catkins on my Japanese pussywillows, the ones growing at my godmother's house were small, silvery-grey, like little pearls. It was hard to snap them off, sometimes I sort of ending up more or less peeling the branches from the main bush. The woody stems were a yellow-green with that earthy, greeny, thin sappy sent that reminds me of spring, of ground squishy with snowmelt and spring rain and just being a kid.

I remember a drainage ditch (which I called a stream) and floating the catkins that had fallen off (or I had pulled off) on it. They floated very well, I think because of the little pockets of air the the "fur" caught. I used to pretend that I was in the sky, placing clouds here and there and they would float along on air currents. When I got tired of this (or bored or hungry or wet enough) I'd go inside my godmother's house and give her the pussywillows.

My godmother always appreciated a bouquet of pussywillows and would always put them in a vase in what was really a dingy, bordering on dirty livingroom, but in my eyes, it was my favorite place to be, because of the candy bowls (more about that some other time), a bookshelf with just my books on it, the ability to be myself and be loved solely for that, and a vase full of whatever blooms where in season and I had picked.

'Za

While I like Japanese food and am particularly blessed to be smack in the middle of farm country,
I really miss US pizza. In all it's various glories. I was a bit sad there's no entry for "Buffalo-style" yet.

Masako-san and me

Masako-san and me
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

Working the Kimono Shop on 1/11/08.
It's always a blast.

Couscous for Dinner

Sometimes I suprise myself and produce something both interesting and edible:

Couscous with ginger, cherries, peppers and squash!

IZ RLY O RLY CHCLT!

IZ RLY O RLY CHCLT!
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

THIS sort of thing is what totally makes shopping in Japan worth it.
Y RLY!

Gantan

"Gantan" is the first day of the new year, which is today!
I fell asleep 15 minutes before the arrival of the new year, thusly sleeping through it. That's really not anything new.

I wish everyone the best for the new year, and hope 2008 is filled with "peace, love and good happiness stuff"for all of you.

Osoji

Most Japanese households perform a ritual cleaning called Osoji, in preparation for the new year. It's a pretty thorough cleaning and time-consuming enough that most Japanese now wait until a weekend to do it, making do with a symbolic cleaning of the family altar if New Year's Day falls on a weekday.

My mom always did a thorough house cleaning on New Year's day. I followed that tradition to some extent, but I do mine before now, a gaijin version of Osoji.

This year, my Osoji took approximately 28 hours (over two and a half-days). I have a three-bed room, one-and-a-half bath house. The cleaning takes so long because it's top-to-bottom and truly involved. Some of the things I do: I pull down the curtains to be laundered, I pull stuff out of drawers, closets, off of shelves, etc. I also pull up the area rugs and move the furniture and scrub and wax the floors. I usually pull a muscle or two as well. I clean the stove, the fridge, change out fire alarm batteries and stuff like that. Wax the woodwork, clean the ceiling fixtures (guess how many dead bugs in my living room light? Too many!) This year, I had the added fun of snaking our bathroom drains. There's some interesting um, stuff(?) that gets built up in those drains. Yuk. I put aside items to go to charity (clothes that don't fit or I don't wear). I take down the Christmas tree and all the other holiday decorations. I also put up our shiminawa and kadomatsu.

As I'm typing this, it's been snowing all morning and it's looking pretty and white outside. My house is sparkling clean and so cozy. Best wishes for the new year!

Christmas in Japan: Part III

Tree
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

Here's my Happy Holidays!
Hoping yours were wonderful, too!

Enuff Fluff

Enuff Fluff
Originally uploaded by bakagaijiin

The internet is a truck.
A wonderful, fluff-filled truck.
A wonderful fluff-filled truck that arrives via USPS to my mailbox.

Goldie, if you want some fudge, you need to email me your snail mail addy.

Christmas in Japan: Part II

Okay, so what kind of real fucking American grocery store runs out of MARSHMALLOW FLUFF DURING THE HOLIDAYS? The commissary here, that's who.

Today, I was picking up some baking supplies for this weekend, hoping that a massive dose of Christmas tunes, holiday baking of breads, cookies and making of candy as well as liberal applicatons of booze and putting up the tree would get me in the holiday spirits, because, for the first time in my life, I really don't give a shit about the holidays. I was actually kind of excited about baking/candymaking, so I got my chips and flour and sugar and sprinkles and stuff like that, but still needed to get Fluff for the fudge. So I push my cart over to where the Fluff normally is and IT IS SOLD OUT! IT'S ONLY THE FIRST WEEK OF DECEMBER. SWEET ZOMBIE BABBY FUCKING JEEBUS. THIS PLACE IS TEH SUX0R.

I was shaken right down to my blue-collar/white trash roots. NO FLUFF! Yeah, yeah, I know you candy snobs are like "Make fudge the proper way, luzr!" I honestly don't feel like dicking around with doing it from scratch. And ya know what? Fluff fudge is easy and the guys at the office like it. But it requires MARSHMALLOW FLUFF OF WHICH THERE IS NONE!

And there is no way I'll find it in the Japanese suupa. Or if I do it will beconsidered a "gourmet import" and will cost 2,000 yen (about 20 bucks).

My god. NO FLUFF. I had to console myself with a large whiskey with some eggnog in it.

Christmas in Japan: Part I

(clipped from Daily Mainichi's English Website, because they don't do permalinks)

Electric eel used to power Xmas lights

Aqua Toto Gifu's electric eel and the Christmas tree lights it powers. (Mainichi)

KAKAMIGAHARA, Gifu -- An aquarium filled with exotic fish here is using an electric eel to power lights on a Christmas tree.

Each time the electric eel at the Aqua Toto Gifu aquarium touches a copper wire in its tank, it sends power that lights up globes decking a Christmas tree.

Officials expect the "eel Christmas tree" to be a popular attraction for dating couples in the lead-up to Christmas Day, when the tree will be removed.

Electric eels are capable of generating electricity in their bodies. They have notoriously poor eyesight and use electric shocks to stun prey so they can catch and eat them.

Phew!

I am home once again. After 20 days stateside, I've decided if it takes me another three years to get home, it'll be too soon.

Pictures on my flickr photostream.