Garden in Japan=======+

A 'before' picture of our backyard

After a week of intensive work...too bad you can't see the row of lavendar plants under the window, oh well.

My Kimono airing out in the breeze.

varriety ours

It's important to keep doing things that are interesting, it forces your brain to work.


Sarah is making a garden.

we are making music.


But I seem to be in the "internets are shiney" phase of being reconnected to the world; spending far to much time reading comics and the what's happening to paris hilton now, er the news, and of course watching people dance with dogs on you tube.


media are powerfull tools almost always wasted, what does your browser history look like?

odd tidbits

This is the story of how we got our second keyboard; the first story may come later, if ever.

It's the middle of June and we decide to spend our first day off apart to pursue our own ends, me in the little home studio setup I've got going and Sarah walking around with her camera. She didn't get very far. At the end of our block, it turns out, is a little used store which attracted Sarah like a overworked metaphor attracts a hack writer. This store is full of old clothes, junk and whatnots all for very cheap (actually it's a little hard to tell if the place is a store or just the first floor of some lady's house). and so I get an e-mail or c-mail (what you might call a text message) from sarah telling me to come check out some stuff, OK music is going well enough but its breaktime anyhow... I walk down the block and, well, the little old ladies had Sarah cornered fussing over her and laughing and chatting on; these were the type of ladies who if you weren't careful would have you very well fed, stuffed in a couch between them and about to meet an eligible type about your age, who is shy but endearing and loves his or her aunt/great aunt/ cousin's uncle's sister the type can be found in all countries and in all languages. Sorry, back to the story. They had her cornered, just two of them, one setting up an old casio keyboard the other rummaging through boxes looking for a power cable and firing rapid questions at her husband/brother/nephew (?). but Sarah could not have escaped if she tried, the greatest illusionist of the 19th centuary couldn't have gotten out of there until they were finished with him. Once the keyboard was set up, and yes I was trapped at this point as well, one of the women proceeded to play us a little tune of 4bars length for the next five or six minutes, and then insisted that sarah play as well. Once Sarah bent over to play the woman began to pretend to polish her backside, she then turned to me laughing and slapped my chest so hard I moved back at least a foot, her next move was to actually hug Sarah around the waist (for playing the same tune? thanks Hill for teaching it to us) and giggle. Finally we were allowed to pay for our things and after another few minutes allowed to leave with them, Sarah's wandering only having gone a block physically but spiritually she had truely arrived.


That's it for now, I may edit this into so kind of sensical progression but I doubt it. Philip

Minnowing - a pretty word to hear yourself say.

Today I began to gain my voice.
In truth I began to lose it...but isn't that somewhat glass is half empty? Now I'm having narcissistic episodes, showing symptoms of an even deeper disease. I love the sound of my new voice. Singing, speaking out of turn- and unnecessarily, I'm a puppet animated by a strangers voice. There's a keen awareness of disconnection between my physical and psychological self. Have you ever cut yourself with a sharp knife, leaving a flap of flesh grinning in your direction? I always go through this weird progression of thoughts:

1. That grisle can no longer be identified as ME and I must remove it from my thinking, feeling, living body.
2. What if that happless skin flap is every bit as ME as it gets?
3. Maybe if I stick it back where it belongs the two ME's will reconcile somehow?

After your instincts inform your approach as to how to deal with that piece of YOU-ness dangling off/on you, the only thing left to consider is the object-ness of one's body. Look at your hands, don't move and just look at them. Try not to feel any sensation but the weight of them. Aren't they heavy?

-S

"you should post baby"

How fun is it to teach with a sore throat. Illness aside, Sarah and I have been having quite a time here in Japan, from; teaching where we get to sing childhood favorite songs and do the hokey pokey and then in the next hour discuss international politics or abortion, to studying kendo which involves hitting old guys in armor on the head while shouting "men", and of course exciting excursions into the world of recycling (where you seperate glass from plastic every alternate thursday unless it has rained, and so forth), into the Japanese rainy season (where I am to understand we have not yet learned the true meaning of mold) and of course trial and error grocery shopping (it's laundry soap, it's not rice). Another thing about being here is I have started to notice the way I write, can you believe that this is only the third sentence, what a rambler. okokokokokokok, ok; the most widespread word in the world, the second being cocacola, I don't know what the third is but I imagine it to be McDonnalds or Disney related if it isn't then maybe some henous thing spawned by the technological revolution like "pwned" but that might be a few years down the line. should it be the typological revolution? As for personal time, I am reading Schopenhaur thanks to the interest of one of my students, and it's quite a bit of fun even if he takes a paragraph to say a sentence worth of material, its still an improvement on Kant's 40pages per idea, but maybe that is just the German language. Sarah has been reading various stories and neither of us have made a reasonable start at learning Japanese, even what little we know is hard to utilize after spending most of the day making sure that as much of what is spoken is in English. Warning this post is really boring dont read it, Ha, can't say I didn't warn ya.

An Anne Frank moment

I've been reading quiet a bit since we've settle down. Not the 2.3 books Phil reads a day but a decent amount. Mostly Japanese authors, Soseki Natsume and Haruki Murakami, hands down some of the best reading I've ever done. The day before last, I finished my last book of theirs and had to resort to the MIL library reserve. Last. Last. Last. So I'm reading The Diary of Anne Frank. Why such punishment, I don't know. It is like some kind of torture to read it and, like a squirming child trying to resist her spoonful of medicine, I read dutifully. If you've ever read the book, you can sympathize with me but I'm not sure why you would. The book makes me paranoid. Not just that I'm waiting for Anne to be taken away by her inevitable destiny but that her destiny was not a figment of some authors vivid imagination but instead a ...boulder lodged in the throat of humanity. Every turned paged leads me to the question: Why am I so damn lucky? I try to find a logical answer but I can't. Like a pachinko player who's bound to strike either gold or bankruptsy - I crank the handle on another day somewhat absent mindedly and hope for the best with waxy eyes and warm thoughts.

Last night, Phil came down with a fever. I think I was fretting more than a little over him, dosing him with potent ginger tea, two advils, cold compresses and the Sakura City brochure as a fan to cool him down. I was having a paranoia attack over his body, fanning frantically. I'm sure this overreaction was due to Ms. Frank. Phil's fever was a kind of tragedy about to unfurl around me and I was a young girl holed up in a dark room awaiting something terrible. Except that if I was more like her, I would lean over the body of my apparently dying boyfriend to look out the window and say something like..."My, what grand weather!" And by no means do I mean (mean. mean. mean.) to belittle Anne Frank's spirit with my earlier comment but instead only intend to highlight my own tendency towards pessimism. And what do I have to be pessimistic about in light of my life? Really, I should be spanked.

When I woke this morning to find Phil's fever broken I couldn't help but think: Lucky, Lucky me.

time passes irrelevantly...

I'm not sure what that means. Anyway, here we are again, back on the digital lifeline. Hmmm, it's a little awkward after so much time to know where to start this update. A lot has happened, probably most of it is ...small, in the scope of things but a little adds up to a lot, as they say. Like two old friends who have a lot to relate but don't know where to begin, I say hello. I'm bad at chronology, mostly because my memory is so damn bad and I tend to focus on the relatively minute and unprofound things...like getting haircuts in Japan...I guess I'll start with something small. Like haircuts in Japan.

I got my hair cut for the second time today. No, what I mean is...Today was the second time I had my hair cut in Japan. Starting out pretty deep, huh? Hold on for the ride, you may fall asleep at the wheel. The name of the place I went to is called 'Sweet.' Yes, Sweet Hair Salon. I showed up without an appointment the first time I went (come to think of it, i've never made an appointment) and with a lot of gesturing, pointing, miming scissors hacking at my head, I managed to convince them to take me on. Now a lot of you might be thinking, okay, so now that you're in the chair and the guy with the scissors is poised, no big deal, read a magazine. That just it. Not being able to explain anything to your artiste du coiffure whatever, french not my forte neither japanese, etc personal hair hacker makes for an excercise in releasing control. I know this sounds so retarded, in fact, I think I may regret that this is the first thing I write about after weeks of no input but on my fingers tap. I just had to trust the guy, smile, nod and try not to worry too much about this superficial thing that I have tied like a cement block to the concept of my identity. Hair. Hair. Hair. Falls to the tiled floor in whirling clouds as 'Hiroshi' expertly drags his blades through my locks with a permanent and tiny smile plastered to his face. What is going through his mind, anyway? His smile freaks me out a little but I can't help but smile too. A tiny plastered smile. We don't say a word to eachother. He massages my scalp with a minty, invigorating oil, seemingly thrilled to do a little dance around me and tousle my hair. I'm not sure why this is so amusing to me. Maybe it's because he does it so damn lovingly. Like my hair is the most important and precious comodity he's ever had the pleasure to play with. Before I'm released from the chair I'me given a neck and shoulder rub, shiatsu style. The way he smackes the top of my head with his palms reminds me of Kendo and that all his hard work is going to be wrapped up under a sweaty 'Men' helmet in but a few hours. He gestures to me that I may rise from the seat by bowing about five times and ushering me to the counter. I'm more than willing to shell out thirty bucks.

Hmm...so how's my hair look, you may be wondering? It's fine, just fine. Not perfect by any means but lovingly crafted by a Japanese man called Hiroshi who, for all the world, loves to cut hair.

up to date updates

look at that the second update in as many days, this might be a trend (or maybe i am just suuuuuuuuuuper happy about having the interweb again)


first up i found out how to get to the english language version of this site, so posting is les of remembering where the correct buttons for things are and more actually trying to detail information about our lives. second here is a short tour of our apatrment a view from the kitchen of our bedroom, living room and then into the kitchen, there is a little more to see but it is little more to see, so deal.






so that strange pyrmid shaped thing is our kotatsu table which has a blanket that goes under the table top and an electric air heater to keep your legs and feet warm. this has been taken down now that the warmer times are upon us, but kinda neat anyhow.

it has been a while since we were posting so there are a lot of things that we are used to now, and a few stories that may go untold, if you have questions about anything just leave a comment and i will do my best to make up an complex story that will be less interesting than the truth (so you don't burst a blood vessal)

back and so forth

Well, that took to long. The thing about Japan is that if you are sent something important you have to "honko" er stamp er sign for it, even when it would fit through the mailslot on your door. so anyway we have the internet now, finally. work has been going relatively well, an eikaiwa is basicly a chance for japanese people to interact with native english speakers, for kids its playtime in english and for adults it isn't to dissimilar. as for personal things, sarah and i are studying aikido again as well as kendo both twice and only on the weekends. main list of concerns now is how long we have been out of contact and the other was actually getting the internet, of course now that we have it (as of 11:15am on Friday the 8th of June) the next hurdle is the tendency for our browser to put us in the japanese language version of any site we try to get to, this one for instance. but we will persevevere par server and all that.


also last week we were in an earthquake, my first it was about a 3 or 4 and i thought it was kids playing in a classroom upstairs until it kept going, and i saw the looks on my adult students faces. a strange feeling, not scary, and it was over before i had time to really think much of it.

more soon, really this time. philip