Nara 1991

I can’t remember exactly which temple this was, but I’m sure it was in Nara. (Yuriko isn’t able to pinpoint it either.) This was October 1991, and it’s a favorite picture of myself.

Nara 1991My old college friend Steve probably took it, since he was visiting about then, and we went a fair number of places — Nara would have definitely been on that list. I went to Nara many times, since it was an easy subway and then train trip from where I lived.

I took every visitor I had to Tōdai-ji (東大寺), a sizable temple complex in Nara. The star attraction at Tōdai-ji is the Daibutsuden, the Great Buddha Hall, which features the Daibutsu (大仏) or Great Buddha inside.

TodaijiIf I’m interpreting those measurements correctly, the Daibutsu is nearly 49 feet high, with over 17 feet of that devoted to his head. I never did take a good picture of the Daibutsu, but I do have this.

DaibustuThe size is impressive, but so is its age. The Daibutsu dates from the 8th century of the Common Era, though parts have been recast over the centuries, such as the hands and head, and the building around it has been rebuilt twice, most recently in the 18th century. I never got tired of visiting.

Prefecture Osaka

PrefectureOsakaTwenty-five years ago this week, primed by a young man’s sense of adventure, I moved to Japan. Eventually I learned my way around, literally and figuratively, without the assistance of the Internet, since it wasn’t in common use. One of my better investments along those lines — literally getting around, that is — was a paper atlas called Prefecture Osaka.

At least, those were the roman-letter words on the cover. In fact, those were the only roman letters in the entire book. Extracting useful information sometimes took a while but — in that great eventually again — I learned my way around the book, too.

Sometimes I would stare at it, just because I enjoyed looking at it. The lines, the tints, the utterly foreign script — it’s a beautiful group of maps. This is one of the pages. As it happens, the northern part of Sumiyoshi Ward, which is where I lived. My block’s nearly in the fold, so it isn’t displayed here. But a lot of familiar places are.

OsakaMapOldNeighborhoodThe whole-page scan doesn’t really do it justice, though. Even the close-up doesn’t, but imagine a crisp paper version of this image, because digital will never capture the aesthetics of paper.

OsakaMapOldNeighborhood2The bright yellow rectangle is the JR Nagai station (these tracks). The white rectangle is the Nagai subway station on the Midosuji Line. I rarely used JR, but I went to the Nagai subway station just about every day. Urban Japan, as our urban planners say, has high walkability.

The ward was further divided, as marked by different tints on the map. My area was called Nagai-Nishi: West Nagai. That was further subdivided — twice. The smallest divisions are the blocks marked by the small blue numbers. The green space on this map is green space: Nagai Park (Nagai Koen, 長居公園 ). Literally, Long Park.

Yumura Onsen 1992

Hard winter insisted on hanging around until Friday — the first week of March was a lot like the last week of January this year — but finally, as of Saturday, air temps were above freezing and patches of ground started emerging from their white covering. In the back yard at least. A few more days of this and I’ll be able to see the front yard again.

Yumura Onsen, the Hyogo Tourism Guide tells us [all sic], “was opened by Jikaku Daishi about 1,150 years ago. In the central part of the hot spring street there is a freshly heated water fountain and since the opening, 470 liters of hot water (98ºC) come gushing out per minute. Taking a rest in the 21m long foot bath along the river in the hot spring town is recommended.”

I’ll go along with that. Hyogo Prefecture includes Kobe, but Yumura’s toward the other side of the mountains, near the coast of the Sea of Japan. I visited Yumura in March 1992, and posted about it before — especially on the local practice of boiling eggs in the hot spring water. None of the pictures I have of the visit include the eggs or the hot springs, but I do have some of us gadding around the small town.

Yumura1992.1I remember the minshuku we stayed at fondly (the basics of minshuku are here). Sleeping on the floor is seldom an issue with me, especially when it involves sleeping on a tatami.
Yumura1992.2The floor at the Yumura minshuku was so comfortable that it was hard to get up in the morning. Harder than usual, that is.

Happy Turn Rice Crackers

Yuriko bought some Happy Turn rice crackers (senbei) recently. They’re oval crackers with a light sweet-soy flavor. Happy Turn is the name — or rather, the English rendering of the katakana name, ハッピーターン. A product of Kameda Seika Confectionery.

Happy Turn rice snacksThey’re very popular in Japan with both adults and children, and they didn’t last long in our house. I prefer Bonchi rice snacks myself, which are shaped like small bowls and are a bit saltier, but I’m fond of these too. Been a while since we’d had any.

Snow in Osaka

Snow throughout the night and into the day today. Not a blizzard exactly, just a steady build up with some wind. Just when our driveway was more-or-less clear from previous non-blizzard buildup. But at least it’s February. The best thing about that is that it’s not January any more.

The view of the back yard around noon today. Much more snow was to come.

Feb 1 2015 Dog in snowOsaka’s hot and humid much of the year, with mild winters. A gas-burning space heater was all I needed to heat my small apartment in the winter. But it did get cold. Early in 1994, Osaka got snow. Like the San Antonio snow event 21 years earlier, it was novel enough so that I took pictures.

Osakasnow94.1Just a coating. The white building in the background was my apartment building, known as the Sunshine Mansion. The windows of my third-story unit are mostly obscured in this shot by the twin utility poles, but I had a fairly good view.

Osakasnow94.2A few blocks away is the Nagai crossing of the JR Hanwa Line. The partial rainbow marks the site of a pachinko parlor. Behind that was a grocery store I went to often (pachinko, never).

Osakasnow94.3Follow those tracks far enough, and you get to Wakayama. In the other direction is the much closer Tennoji terminus, which is in the city of Osaka. But I rarely took the Hanwa line. Not far away was the Nagai station of the Midosuji Line of the Osaka subway system, which is how I usually got around.

Thursday Debris

Snow’s back in some quantity. We even have a minor drift on the deck, caused by persistent wind. Doesn’t seem to bother the hound.

Dog in Snow

Yuriko’s been back from Japan for nearly a week. Just got around to copying the pictures she took from the SD card. Here’s one I liked.

Osaka Public Hall, Late 2014

It’s the Osaka City Central Public Hall on Nakanoshima, aglow in the night. I used to walk by that pre-war structure often (almost pre-first war, since it was finished in 1918). It had to good fortune to survive the Pacific War, as they call the second war in Japan, and post-war urban uglification, too.

She also enjoyed some artful eats.

Sushi in Japan

Japan’s a good place to find that.

The worldwide competition for Barbarian of the Year got an early start in ’15, alas. We don’t even really know who the latest entrant is. Last year it was a toss-up between ISIS and Boko Haram. The jury’s still out on that one.

Huis Tem Bosch ’93

We now have a 2015 calendar produced by Nishi-Nippon Railroad Co. Ltd., which I believe Yuriko got for free, and it’s a high-quality bit of work. It’s has a travel theme, and as with a lot of calendars – or magazines or other pictorial works — the photography’s of extreme high quality. Looking at the pictures, you can easily imagine that you’ll never see anything so grand in person, but then again, everything I see with my eyes is higher quality than any photography; it’s just that we’re so used to seeing with our eyes that we don’t appreciate it.

Anyway, the subject is Kyushu – the coast off Nichinan City, plum groves in Kitakyushu, barley fields in Saga Prefecture, Ogi City cherry blossoms and more. It reminds me of how little I saw of Kyushu: mainly Nagasaki and the curious Japanese theme park known as Huis Tem Bosch.

The theme? The Netherlands. Wiki puts it this way, and I can confirm the description, at least as of December 1993 when we went: “The park features many Dutch-style buildings such as hotels, villas, theatres, museums, shops and restaurants, along with canals, windmills, amusement rides, and a park planted in seasonal flowers.”

Parades, too.

HuisTemBosch 1993Since we were there in December, a fellow dressed as Father Christmas posed for pictures with visitors. I guess that would be Sinterklaas. I think he really was a Dutchman, but in any case he was blotto.

Telephone Incident 1992

In my apartment in Osaka, I had a black rotary phone connected to the wall by a sturdy black cord. There was no way to disconnect it without damaging the cord. Even in the early 1990s, that setup was a throwback. I don’t remember my phone number any more, but maybe it was 609 3443 or 3449. The problem described below didn’t go on for long, fortunately.

October 11, 1992

Recently some business somewhere has been assigned a phone number very similar to mine. At least it doesn’t seem to be a place, like a pizza joint maybe, that gets calls every minute. Even so, someone’s got 609 3446, one misstroke on a push-button phone from connecting with me. I received about a half-dozen call for this business in the afternoon.

At first I answered the phone each time, telling the caller than he had a wrong number, after which he would invariably call back. One dim bulb called three times, even after I’d told him (in reasonably good Japanese) that he’d misdialed the last digit.

I was annoyed until I had the inspiration of holding the receiver close to my tape deck, which I’d turn up a little for the occasion. Then I started having fun with it. No one ever called back after hearing a little music. The jolt must have made them more careful of the next dialing.

Greater Furano 1993

As a destination, Hokkaido has a lot to recommend it. Seafood and walks in the hilly town of Hakodate; mountains in the central part of the island for skiing, for people who like that, as well as biking and hiking trails; fall foliage on par with New England or East Tennessee; dairy products on par with Wisconsin; scenic Lake Akan; a wine-making region, including a wine “castle”; and Sapporo, the only place on the island as crowded as a Honshu city, but with its charms, such as the Sapporo Beer Garden.

The foliage up in the central mountains offered vivid yellows and reds when we visited in late September and early October 1993, but green still predominated in the agricultural areas near Furano, a small city also in central Hokkaido. The terrain isn’t mountainous, but not flat either.

Near Furano, Hokkaido, 1993The region is known for its carrots and onions and corn and lavender, as well as milk and ice cream, none of which the outside world associates with Japan. The Meiji government saw its chance to remake Hokkaido into an agricultural province in the late 19th century – they might have been a little worried that the Tsar wanted it, along with Sakhalin – and naturally hired foreign experts to get things rolling. In this case, the agriculturist William Clark of Massachusetts, who established Sapporo Agricultural College (now Hokkaido University) in the 1870s. We saw his statue at the school.

We walked on one of the roads outside of town. As I said, still mostly green.

Near Furano, fall 1993This sign was simple enough for me to read. Watch out! Children. Essentially, a Children At Play sign.

Children at Play Sign, Hokkaido, fall 1993I liked this.

Hokkaido pumpkins, fall 1993Hokkaido farmers also seem to grow pumpkins, used here to advertise a museum. Taku’s Photography Museum, Yuriko tells me. But we didn’t take Taku up on visiting his museum.

O-Bon 1990

Things I Did During O-Bon (August 12-19)

Saw the Daimonji Gozan Okuribi on August 16 in Kyoto. I parked myself on the banks of the Kamogawa River among a large crowd also there to see the event. Sure enough, not long after dark, the first of the bonfires came to life, a 大 shape, “dai” or large, defying a bank of rainclouds that occasionally cut loose on the audience. It looked a little distant, but it was worth seeing once.

[The Japan National Tourist Board tells us that “although there are several interpretations as to the origins of this event, it is generally regarded as a fire set alight at the gate for seeing off the souls of ancestors after commemorating the welcoming of their souls. The character of “dai” (meaning “large”) on Mt. Daimonji, and those of “myo” and “ho,” which make up the word “Myo-ho” (wondrous teaching of Buddha) on Matsugasaki Nishiyama and Higashiyama mountains are famous.”]

Took some long walks in Osaka and one in Kyoto, from the Kenkakuji (Golden Pavilion) to the Nijojo Castle. The latter was closed by the time I got there [I eventually visited the Nijojo.]

Visited a few museums, including the Osaka Municipal Museum; the Kyoto National Museum; and the Museum of Oriental Ceramics. [Some years later, I told an acquaintance of mine who’s a gifted potter that I’d been there, and he was clearly envious of the experience. I liked the pottery well enough, but his instincts were right. It should have been him rather than me, in terms of who could appreciate it best.]

Also spent time at the National Museum of Ethnology, which has all kinds of interesting artifacts, such as a yurt, Polynesian vessels, African masks, lots more. The museum is at Expo Park, site of Expo ’70, the world’s fair held in Osaka that year. That’s probably the first time I’d ever heard of the city. Other relics from the fair include the enormous outdoor sculpture called “Tower of the Sun,” looking very much like something created in the late 1960s. [By Taro Okamoto, who died in 1996. I had no idea there was anything inside the work.]

Discovered a second-run theater in Osaka, admission only 600 yen for two movies. Good place to go for air conditioning, a traditional reason to go to the movies. This week saw Lair of the White Worm and Salome’s Last Dance, a sampler of Ken Russell’s recent twisted visions. Before seeing them, I’d mostly known his movies by reputation. Altered States, which I did see once upon a time, was much worse than either of these.