real winter

Well, I made it to Canada after a loooOOOOoooOOOoooOOoong journey. Landing in Chicago was crazy! The winds were so strong we had to make 3 attempts to land. And when we finally did, the storm got worsen, making it almost impossible to fly out. But luckily, I made it only after a 4 hour delay. (Some people were in the airport for about 2 days).

I'm here now and it feels good to be back. Had dinner at Bombay Bhel, my favourite Indian restaurant. I kind of want to go back again! mmmmmmmm samosa!

Anyway, it's really winter here! Not unbearably cold, but definitely below zero. And the best part is that there's LOTS of snow! It really looks like Xmas, except this year the Christmas lights are not EVERYWHERE like last year. I guess people are getting smart about being energy efficient.

MERRY X-MAS EVERYONE!!!

post 200

well...as of today I will be travelling. In a few days I will arrive in Canada. So the posts will be slow in between.　I'm really excited to see my friends and family. And I'm a little anxious about Canadian winter...Here I've been walking around with a spring jacket, and going out for lunch without any jacket. I mean, it's still raining here! In Canada it's between -10°C and -1°C. And I bet there's more than 30cm of snow already.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year. I have a good feeling about 2008! 良いお年を！

Usagi to tsuki no odori

Well, here`s a photo of the final. It`s not a scan, but I`ll have to do for now. I`m happy with it and I hope that it is selected to be the book cover that I`ve trained it to be. My little brain child all grown up...It makes me feel so proud!

next week

Well, I will be going back home in a few days. It all kind of set in today. I've been so busy lately that I've hardly had any time to think about anything. I haven't started packing or anything. This morning I realised that the year is almost over, that Xmas is almost here! Man, time flies, doesn't it?

Ok. Well, as it has become a tradition, I will write a list of the things I want to do/eat:

•A&W Poutine (with a frosty mug)
•zucchini and cauliflower
•CENTRAL HEATING!!!
•see friends and family (of course)
•praat Afrikaans
•bagels and croissants
•feel REALLY cold!
•talk to a stranger
•go pants shopping
•see the AGO and the ROM
•have dinner on the CN tower—while it's still the tallest in the world!

Ok well, those are the things I want to do/see/eat while I'm back.

Go Tiesma, Go!

This is a shout-out to Benjamin!

His original Xmas song still makes me a little weepy when I hear it. I was there when he and Alison recorded it in our little Albion shack in London. It in itself was a precious Xmas memory. Ah, Alison...Where did you go? Anyways, here is this years Xmas song by Benjamin Tiesma: Snowflake Heart. (Left click to play, right to download)

Thanks, Benjamin, for adding to the 'Holiday-music-I-don't-hate' list. Yes, buddy, you are right up there with 'Christmas in Killarney'!

If you have a link to 'Missed You So' (I think that's what it was called, right?), please send it my way!

Well, here we have it folks a little Xmas present for everyone, courtesy of Benjamin.

the messiness of life

So recently I've been working on a book cover for some competition. It's been a while since someone actually gave me an art project, and it actually feels really good to be working on something. But as always having so much pressure to work on something has thrown me into a creative beret-wearing phase. I think when you are actively doing art you look at life with completely different eyes.

The theme is the moon. The thumbnail I drew looks something like this:


Of course it's not done yet. The final is in progress on my desk. And when I look around in my room, I see exactly how crazy messy your environment has to become to work on art. I`m not sure if it's like this for everyone...I mean, I'm sure there are some artists who have a spotless workshop as if they wipe up every spilled drop of paint.

My creativity almost demands that it be messy. Everything I could possibly need within grabbing distance.

remarkable eyes

I posted a story I wrote recently here. It's nothing special, but it spontaneously came out of me, and I had time during my internet-less period to write it out. So Enjoy!

punctuation!!!

I love this! I wanna reproduce something like this as a skit. I wish I knew about this when I went to arts camp!

meat rocket!

Anyone want some uncle meat?! You can ride it like a space ship and eat it all night long! But remember kids, if your real uncle ever asks, you say "no!" Unless you live in one of those countries where you can call any older male 'uncle', then it might be OK. Just be careful, sometimes the rocket can burn you if you touch it. Why? ...'Cause it's HOT like a Plasma screen TV in Detroit, dammit!

the winter feast

So during the stint where I had no internet, Kazue-sensei had a winter feast in her beautiful apartment. It was like 4 of mine joined together and took up half the floor of the apartment building. It was a potluck party and everyone brought something nice to eat. I made a wheat salad; kinda sweet curry flavour. But the impromptu cooking prize goes to Erin, who made an incredible pasta salad. Of course, everything was good, though!

Here`s the spread. It looks like a Thanksgiving meal at home! Yay, real food! (Of course, I ate wheat salad for the next week!)

After the meal we relaxed with wine and had a `pile-on` on Akiko as soon as she laid down. "PILE ON!!!!!"

Good times!

Crazy Canadians!!!

This is crazy! First time I look at Canadian news and this is what I see!

Basically: Guy breaks up with girl. Girl goes crazy. Grabs a katana and goes on a rampage. Destroys a car and slices a fire-fighter.

READ ALL ABOUT IT! WOMAN GOES NUTS WITH A KATANA!

Maybe we need a sword registry in Ontario...

games shows

Japan is a country of game shows. The television is almost always filled with some kind of game segment, a panel of experts giving their opinion on something, and a section on food. It is all pretty entertaining. Although I never watch TV except in very rare situations, when I do (even in a few brief seconds) I usually catch only GOLD!



This is from one of these shows. Psychological, man...I tell you.

Katakana words

Well, it seems my internet came back just in time for the "Two girls, one cup" video phase...Not sure what that's all about...

Anyways, I have the net again! YAY!!

So I thought I'd start small, so as not to hurt myself.

Here are some katakana words that sounds very funny:

A little bit of unexpected truth here. When you read the name of the November special, you get 'Mac Crap'. How true...I wish all McDonald's products were named this honestly — McChickenHead, McSaw-Dust, McProcessed Junk, and the old favourite, McMutant Chicken.

Not sure what this is exactly, but the flavour is 'Penis.

This is a bottle of spray paint I was looking at. The colour is 'Ass Brown. What kind of marketing is that?!?

bowing signs

This is great! I`m sure this sign you can only see in Japan. It`s a bowing traffic sign.
"Thank you honorably for slowing down"

tea ceremony

On Sunday I went to a tea ceremony. I'm consedering either a calligraphy or tea ceremony class for the new year. The teacher was a small, grey-haired lady in a beautiful black and red kimono, who spoke proudly of zen, the seasons, and Japanese culture. She seemed very nice and even tried to speak English a little bit. We communicated very well, stumbling only on ceremonial words, names for certain tools, and old Japanese words. But all in all, it was a beautiful experience.

I sat Japanese style for about an hour and couldn't feel my legs by the end. I didn't even try to stand up because that certainly would have been impossible. But I'm getting better at sitting seiza style. When I got here it was hard to sit on my knees for more than 15 minutes.

The sensei explained that tea ceremony was a kind of past time for the ancient Japanese people. They didn't have TV or radio so they used to sit together and have tea. Here's what makes this different from English tea:

The room is small, there's a hanging scroll on which a beautiful haiku is written about the season. (In this case "Slide open the door to see blowing leaves".) You can hear the rain in the garden all around, and the smell is one of incense burning beneath the pot of water. The cups are themed to match the red leaves of fall, the migrating birds, and the rice harvest. Everything is a perfect microcosm of nature. Like being in a tea ceremony you feel at once part of nature and outside it. It may be the perfect zen paradox. The ceremony with all it's rules, creating the spontaneous sensation of the natural world.

It was beautiful.

Sorry no pictures...

is there a doctor in the house?

funniest video EVER!!!!!!

calligraphy and the park

I haven't done any shuji for a long time, but this weekend I had some experienced help, so I tried again. I've been studying kanji pretty much constantly since I decided to take the test, so this was a way to reacquaint myself with it. Last week I hated it...despised it, even. My food started tasting like Kanji...I guess I had an overload. But this weekend writing the characters with a brush felt really good. Really refreshing. I focused on the strokes, the look and not the meaning. It didn`t matter if I forgot the onyomi or the kunyomi, all that mattered was if it looked beautiful. The character in the corner means 'me'.

Although the weather was bad, I took a walk in the park. The leaves didn't change so much...maybe I missed it. Or maybe there are too many evergreens. I'm not sure.

What was beautiful was the pyramid shapes they make to hold up the trees in the heavy snow. It's characteristic of this area. I love the shape!

on my desk

I believe that you can tell a lot about a person by listing the items on their desk...or in their bags, for example.

If you empty out the contents of a woman`s purse, you`d be able to give a pretty accurate description of her psychologically.


So here is a picture of my desk.

The items are listed like this:
a map of the world with australia at the centre, drawn on a 3M post-it note;
a whiteboard with my dream house drawn in the corner;
spiderman pen;
my personalized water bottle;
kanji practice cards;
(some work);
a giant origami ball;
a walkie-talkie...

What does this say about me? ...I wonder...

Re: NTT telephone line

To whom it may concern:

My internet is not working. I have been having trouble with my NTT telephone for the last few months, and it was disconnected last Wednesday. I have been unable to receive phone calls on it, and so it seemed to me unnecessary to have. Especially since I am paying over ￥2000 for what is now basically a desk ornament from the 1980s.

Much to my chagrin, when my phone line was cut off, my internet also stopped working. I suppose I need to reconnect my phone line, just to have the internet. So, I want to let you know that my posts will be few and far between until my desk ornament is connected again.

Sincerely,

Graeme Lottering

PS. Thanks to all who left comments on the last post. :)

visiting beauty (culture tip #14)

Every once in a while, I will have a real spiritual experience. Perhaps I have been neglecting myself lately, or parhaps I have been too busy to look out into the world recently. I`m not sure, but it's been about a year since I've had a spiritual thought. Yesterday, however, I certainly had a beautiful, serene experience when I visited a temple in Nagoya. (Yes, yes, there's nothing to do in Nagoya, I know! But this temple popped out as I exited a subway and was a delightful surprise.)

Sometimes you just feel that there's something great about the place. It leads you in and you find yourself wondering around the yard, listening to chants and thinking about life. I stood on the porch for about 45 minutes, breathing incense and staring at pigeons scavenging the yard for food.

fig 12 - culture tip 14: The incense is considered purifying and people will waft it onto their bodies, and especially over sick or injured parts to help them heal.

The temple yard was surrounded by buildings because Nagoya is a rather big city, but standing on the temple porch was completely quiet and peaceful, and life seemed to go by at the slow pace of nature.

Every temple has two guardians standing watch over the entrance. Raijin, the thunder god; and Fujin, the wind god. Here there was a giant painting on Fujin on the apartment building walling off the temple yard. It's cheesy I know, but once you have been to Japan you except that the Japanese make very little distinction between cheesiness and high-culture.


I sat on the porch thinking and thinking. And under the giant lantern tied with people's wishes, I felt some deep 4th-dimensional feeling of understanding. Like time was overlapping and the I saw life ever-so-briefly through the temple's eyes. It's impossible to fit into words...But it was beautiful.

funny bush moments

And my personal favourite:

a wee typography video

Tojimbo

Last weekend, I went to a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn to have a meal. We drove about an hour and a bit into the next prefecture. Fukui, is a relatively rural prefecture on the Sea of Japan, known for delicious crab and their funny accent.

The Ryokan was right on the sea, perched like an Eagle's nest on top of these cliffs. The food was incredible and YES! I managed to take a photo of it before eating this time!

The food was absolutely incredible! It was served with hand-made clay glasses of beer or sake. Along with the sounds of the waves breaking below on the rocks. We could actually see the ocean through the windows in all directions. I took some pictures but it's pointless to show because it couldn't possibly convey the feeling of it.

The ryokan also had a hotspring! There was no one else in the mens' onsen, so I thought I would sneak in a camera to FINALLY take an onsen picture for my blog.

The onsen was also right next to the sea. I could actually hear the women in the bath next to me, but we were unable to have a conversation because the waves were to loud.

After the delicious meal and a soak, we drove to Tojimbo, the main tourist attraction in Fukui. It's basically these enormous cliffs that reach like grasping hands into the ocean.

Here's my hyper-UNrealistic picture of one side of the rocks. On the background there's a long red bridge leading out to an island.

When we got there the sun had just started to set. And there was a massive hawk floating around the sky, looking for fish.

My own version of Hokusai's The Wave.

Erin taking a picture of the ever-present hawk.

a walk around Nagamachi

While walking around Nagamachi, the neighbourhood around my house, I saw some persimmons hanging over an old samurai wall.

The area is usually filled with tourists, but that day it was serenely quiet. It was as if I stepped back 200 years...Except, I had my cell phone out to snap a pic of this delicious-looking fruit. (Actually, I never heard of persimmons until I came here)

Lucky I had my phone out and on camera mode, because as I crossed the canal. A giant heron swooped down and slowly walked under the bridge I was standing on to search for fish.

And he caught one!!! Unbelievable! He speared it with his beak. It was an interesting walk through Nagamachi.

Halloween...already?

Yeah, i know it's early...

Here are the pictures from our Halloween Party!
the atmosphere was great! Lots of people showed up and most were dressed up. It was just like a cosplay party gone wild! All the staff were dressed like pirates. The next day my voice hurt from saying 'Yarg!' too much.

me, Remi and Erin

an Indian woman, a witch, and a princess

Jason, me, and a mad scientist

Jason getting murdered by Keiko

me and Kotaro

me and Captain Kontani

the school girl you expect to see in dirty manga: Tomoko

monolith

Just came home drunk off a real-life geisha experience!

No jokes, yo! Very different from the maiko you all imagine, but lemme tell you...Interesting!

Anyways, I won't go into detail. You can read about it from my previous experience here. (Yay! cross-referencing)

I just wanted to post a video, actually.

The Monolith

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the truth behind punctuation

check out this hilarious link!

The funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

I laughed my ass off. Mainly because I know exactly how he feels!

you gotta be kidding!

I couldn't believe it when I saw it myself! I was pretty confused when people started selling bottled water in North America some years ago. The truth is, I couldn't understand why people would buy water when they could just open a tap and drink perfectly good potable life-essence. I mean, I can understand in South/Central America and Afrika, where the running water is 60% human waste, but in North America?! In Canada?! Canada basically has fresh-water mana flowing out of its taps. The water there is more healthy than a vegetable omelette! And yet, despite everything, it caught on.

Well, I guess after all that, I'm not surprised that people would be buying DIET water...

The next thing we'll see will be oxygen cigarettes, that filter out the "bad" air.
Am I right?! I'm right, right?

commuting to clown school

They told me they made things small in Japan. But you would never believe until you saw it. This bike was comedy-sized! Yes, that's my bag sitting in front of it!

Can you imagine a businessman in a suit riding this thing to work?

buildings

This post is about some cool buildings I've seen around Japan.
This one looks like it came from an anime. I like the dark Gothic look, mixed with sci-fi. It almost has a Batman feel.

This one from Tokyo's Odaiba area, it looks like a spacecraft too. The inverted pyramid look must be in these days.

Another upside-down pyramid right here in Kanazawa! Let's all go for a ride in the Stargate, boys and girls!

In Japan, all buildings that are being renovated are covered in a Christo-esque canvas.

What?!? This building has my last name!

By the way, I love the look on the guy's face. It's as if his towel called him a bad word. Simultaneously shocked and disgusted. But they must be good friends, because why would he be carrying a towel anyways?!

Takayama

This weekend I took a trip to Takayama. The name means "high mountain", and truly it is high in the mountains. Until semi-recently the town was inaccessible by car, as the town was kind of a hidden secret. You can still see very traditional thatched-roof houses in the area, which are covered with a thick layer of snow in the winter.

The steep roofs protect the houses from caving in in the winter under the weight of the snow. This town looked like I had stepped back in time to a much older age.

The lifestyle here is also a lot slower, despite a heavy influx of tourists. You still see people in traditional rice hats, farming, gardening and making crafts.

The interior of the houses, probably look something like this. The all used to have a small fireplace in the middle, where people cooked and heated themselves in winter. Nowadays they are still sometimes the centre-piece of a dinner.

The outside doors were slid open and a wonderful breeze blew into the house. This was actually, the government administration building, so it had a large garden in the middle.

This is what I saw.

Outside the narrow streets were bustling with action. The city is actually a city of carpenters! About 80% of all stores sell wooden goods. They were such specialists in their field that the Edo government would often call upon them to build palaces and temples. And in fact, many of the ordinary things were made of wood.

Bowls, forks, spoons: all wood!

The city is still very self-sufficient and lives in relative harmony with nature. If you go into a convenience store, you are likely to see the person behind the counter sanding or carving a wooden toy. The famous food from the area is called 'sansai', and is actually a collection of miscellaneous mountain plants. Most of which I didn't recognise. Some looked like ferns, others like a sweet asparagus (a kind of grass maybe?), yet others like potatoes. All very delicious. So delicious, in fact, that I ate it all before being able to take a picture!