sakura sakura sakura sakura sakura sakura sakura

rain & wind beat hard to swell
teeming sticky life
streets & sidewalks are stunning

(how many reverse haikus are written this time of year?)


Hanami is roughly Japanese for "drinking in the park when the cherry blossoms are out"

Thursday me and Andy went to Koganei Park not half hour on our dogs. In about 1 minute of sitting down, we were joined by a class of chemistry grad students and their professor, who had disgusting lines of spit along the side of his mouth. We played frisbee and drank and were offered 'Japanese snatch' by Takuma, who meant 'snacks', but nonetheless was very eager for me and Andy to concur with him on the beauty and superiority of Japanese women. We promised we would be friends forever. Every day was very similar to that first one, as everywhere we went we made friends forever in about 5 minutes flat. Although I'm sure to never see any of these people again, I'm not going to forget them either.



On Friday Andy, Shinei, Caitlin, Claire and I went to Inokishira Park








Saturday night me and Andy, Catherine, Jamie, Carson, and Loren went to Ueno, the biggest hanami spot in Tokyo. Asking my students if its a good place to go, I got a lot of visceral answers of praise or revulsion.









Finally, on Sunday I joined a larger group in tatters after I finished work on Sunday....Ed, Sarah, Derek, Andy, Nick, Lori and a few forgotten names were the only ones left in the rain and mud.

Embed!

How can I explain? My life is a fine one but there's nothing particularly interesting that I'm doing for the time being. I go for coffee everyday at this cafe that can only fit 3 people, where I chat with the staff and they sneak me sweets I dont want but am too touched not to eat. I teach English conversation 5 days a week: "gonna" "at-ome". There are a few students who I treasure dearly for making the days bearable, and others I desperately maneouver with other teachers never to see again. One student who started out as the latter and became the former is Yu, born in Germany, rich and not working, who swears a lot, and talks about drugs, and took a photo of me for his girlfriend so she wouldnt be jealous that he's spending 40 minutes in a room with a female. He's flighty and ridiculous and misogynistic. He's mentioned a few times that we should hang out outside of school, and I've just brushed this off politely each time, laughing about him with the other teacher but I realised 'no I do want to hang out with him just once. I want to see into his strange world...if he buys me drinks.' And the lessons are always interesting.

My kids classes finished on Saturday, which stabs me a bit right there you know? The kids I had were really fantastic even when they were absolutely mental...this one kid Souichi would cry everytime he won a game or was made the centre of attention. One time we played "London Bridge" and when the bridge fell on him he burst into tears and started punching his mom. In my experience, kids get away with a lot of stuff. In another class, Takuma (who for my first 3 weeks I called Takafuma), two years old, would run around stacking cushions and leaping on them, jumping on a table and running around on it, playing with the tape deck, leaving the class room, all with a wonderful sense of joy that nonetheless aggravates a teacher trying to control a class. The whole time his ma just would watch him and sometimes call out "Taku Taku" and that's it.

I keep losing and gaining things:
LOST (in the last month)
-5000YEN
-CD player
-Murakami's "Wind Up Bird Chronicle"
-9 fine roomates
-Antonio Negri
-kids classes

GAINED
-2 futons
-Augusten Burroughs book
-Murakami's "Wind Up Bird Chronicle"
-3 fine roomates
-a quarter bottle of suntory whiskey
-new kids classes (next week)

As for the video, when I finished and was looking up how to spell Philip Glass for its title, I saw that he did the soundtrack for Koyaanisqatsi, that '80s movie with people moving around really fast in cities, and yeah realised that that's where I got the idea for the movie...I was always vaguely aware that I was doing a Koyaanisqatsi thing, but I never realised I was doing a total rip off of it. If I twist my brain in the right way, that actually further emphasises what I was trying to make fun of.

How to buy Chinese train tickets from Japan?

While waiting in line at a photo shop, I saw a stack of albums with the words "It's not bad to retrace the past" emblazoned on their covers.

Pagans! Worshipping the Sun!

-Spring has come, and Tokyo is in the finest form that I've yet seen it...people are schlepping around outside, the plum blossoms have fallen and cleared the ground for the cherry blossoms.
-Today was a holiday, so I stayed out all night and went at 4am to a club, which was cool to be in for about 6 minutes.
-The statue of liberty is a miniature in Odaiba, a corporate island near Tokyo. Another place its strange to find me at.
-I'm not at all comfortable yet with having a decent amount of money in my pocket.
-Inspite growing up management's son I joined the teacher's union and paid my dues.
-I'm going to China next month: Beijing, Great Wall, Xian, Hua Shan, Yuncheng, Xian, Beijing.

And why

have I been stealing Bill Cosby's dance moves? Ah so I could get next to Mrs. Huxtable.

a three hour tour/kama kama kama kama kamakuuura

On Monday at noon my cousin (say it with a French accent) Michael & his girlfriend Allison and I met in Shinjuku for the beginning of our 3 hour tour to Kamakura, described in the books as a little Kyoto, and a political centre in the 12th century, until the 13th century, a short time after the 3rd Shogun was murdered at the base of the 1000 year old tree which can be seen in the 2nd last photo. Because it used to be a centre of power, there are a lot of old temples and statues etc etc etc, like this famous giant golden Buddha that you can even go inside, apparently.

But our day started with us and Michael & Allison's friend from Toronto, Inderpal waiting for Ken, Steve, and Aoi from their hostel, who took some time getting to a different exit that we had to track down in massive Shinjuku station, taking a ridiculous long time at it. THEN THEN THEN, we had to still leave, 1:07 by this time, and of course the woman behind the counter told us the wrong train line to take, so our train started to backtrack after 10 stops. At the next station, the man behind the counter refused to tell us how to get there because he worked for a different train company than the one we were supposed to be on, so we had to travel to a train station with a JR company line. The hilarious thing was that this was all hilarious to our tired, and sometimes hungover brains and our ebbing hungry tummies. Short long story, we got to Kamakura by 3:30pm, hungry so we searched for dinner. All the sites close by 4:30, except one which we took off to after stuffing our bellies. At the shrine, all Tokyo stress was gone before I even knew I really had it, getting something I didn't even know I needed in return. Afterwards we went to a tea house, moving their tables around to fit our giant party, taking the warmers off the pots because we thought we were supposed to, and generally acting like oblivious monkeys (its kinda easy to feel that way sometimes around here). Here is a video of Michael & Allison acting like monkeys. Monday was awesome even as it was total gong show (slang from my roommate Brock in the filthy filthy house I lived in Waterloo if anyone remembers, with the bathroom that was the size of a closet and where shower/toilet water poured into my room from a rusted pipe and where Brock fell down the stairs in a dead drunk and (thank god for) Dana & I took him to a hospital but he refused to stay there and finally we gave up on him as he walked back to our house at 5am with a bleeding head...Dana if you're out there, I'd like to know what you're doing!)