Kyoto Sakura

Well, it's that time of the year again...Cherry blossom time! This was the first time I saw the blossoms in Kyoto. The whole area around my apartment and my work exploded into a pale pink canopy above the street. There are whole neighbourhoods where it seems the only tree ever planted is the beloved Cherry. This year, they were whiter than I remember.

I've seen them about 5 times now, but they are still just as magical as the first time I saw them. Wow! Taking sakura pictures is addictive!


This is Kiyamachi street. It runs along a little canal and is one of the most beautiful places to see the blossoms. I think it has such a stunning effect because the trees here are right in the middle of the city.

I like the street sign here that says: "Hey son, let's run into
the middle of the road to check out the sakura!"

People tend to have picnics under the trees during spring. This is Maruyama Park and there were so many people that it was hard to find a place to sit down. The whole area was filled with drunken businessmen, tourists, and college kids skipping school. Wouldn't you?

There were a tonne of stalls selling food. This takoyaki-ya san hung his lantern in the branches. It was a good way to get free advertising.


Many women wore kimonos. This was also common in Kanazawa. But the designs in Kyoto take the cake!
After eating some delicious Japanese junk food in the park, I left to go to Nijo Palace to see nighttime blossoms. Nijo Palace is one of Kyoto's many world heritage sites. The illumination was incredible. You can't capture the magic on film...or digitally, even...But I tried! Here are my two best attempts.

The people are so small beneath the ancient trees. It's hard to imagine Japan's first Shogun also walked in the same garden so many years ago.

Everyone had their cameras out. It was irresistible.

The shrine of good humour!

yes, his junk is hanging out

It's a little know shrine in Kyoto, which shares real estate with some kind of noodle shop, but the Shrine of Good Humour is a popular place to visit for pranksters, funnymen, and others seeking the holy grail of gags, puns, and punchlines. The pantsing god, seems like a 'punny' acronym for the panting dog, but he is, in fact, the mascot for the shrine.


The shrine itself is actually comedy size as well. Shrines usually have large torii gates at the entrance, but this shrine has tiny wee things leading to a miniature matchbox building inside a little niche in the corner of the shop. It is a real shrine and people pray for a good sense of humour, and then make a joke.

I tried making a twitter joke: 100 characters of less. "Two men walk into a bar...Ouch."

As in all religions, if your prayers are answered (in this case with a hillarious punchline, a la business man in a suit slipping on a banana, or a cat fail), then you bring a votive plaque to show your appreciation.

I couldn't read them, but one lady is watering her garden with breast-milk

The shrine in renowned for turning greasy dullards into comedic supermen. And this can be seen in the large amount of dirty jokes painted on the votives.

If you have a good twitter joke, please leave it in the comments. Mine was kinda lame, but I was under pressure. There was a big nerd behind me that wanted a transformance into a Charlie Sheen-type winning machine!

98% Grey Book Launch

Well, my book is now available at www.98percentgrey.com as well as on Amazon.com!

The launch was a great success with about 50 people showing up.



Here's the excerpt I read:

"A violent act leaves deep tracks, like knuckle-prints on a sandbag. Above her closet, she wrote “This too shall pass…” She repainted her room in a pastel green, a pale jade. Pantone™ 324. She then employed a gold marker once used in a homegrown bookbinding operation to scrawl enormous French curves and daffodils along the edges of the green field. The room changed to a meadow, to an Art Nouveau altier en plein air. And above the door “This too shall pass” in her own variation of a hand drawn Garamond.

She had owned the house for about 2 years now. It was actually sold through a police auction. The basement area, where Marci has domesticated, was once the crime-den of an ecstasy production ring. It was the laboratory—what the chemists-cum-gangsters called ‘the Pit’. It was an old house in the Annex area of the city, in a neighbourhood of beautiful gardens and ancient, wooden Victorian houses. There was no way one would assume a pharma-criminal ring was producing MDMA in a basement next to old widows and city-council members. Marci’s old associate first discovered the massive auction. It included all kinds of science apparatus, furniture (in particular a mahogany desk circa 1816 which he had his eyes on), as well as holdings all over the city. Marci acquired the house on Euclid Street mainly because the inheritance from her mother allowed her a large wager. It was a difficult time for her and, I suppose, she needed something concrete to pour her feelings of loss into. The house had been her saviour.

A week after she bought it, she moved in with a weapon-rack of brushes, rollers, paints, and palet-knives. The building was a chemically altered, deteriorating zombie, and Marci had to operate. She started at the heart, the lab in the basement, and worked her way up. Initially, she painted what would be her future room, a deep red. It was crimson, a velour close to Pantone™ 202 or 222. She then decided it was not deep enough. It needed more. A profundity which matched her sadness: a deep, pure blue.

She found the muffle-furnace on her second day of living in the house. It was hidden behind a stack of drywall sheets. Marci saw this as a sign. She would build the blue from scratch. It became her process, her catharsis.

She decided to make ultramarine, the deepest and most permanent of the blues, and easy enough to make from scratch.

(Ingredients needed: Clay,
Fine, soft white sand
Charcoal,
Sulphur.)

The baking started on the 6th evening. She watched the white clay heat, turn green, then red. It was an alchemical process that burned inside the oven and inside her heart. She watched it shift, transform and magically settle on a pure blue. The colour of the sky and water, of all things natural and emotional combined, heated into a brick the size of a deck of cards.

On the 7th day, everything was silent. The oven had finished and when Marci, in a spotless white apron complete with long gloves and a doctor’s mask, tried to look inside it, she could not see through the window. There was an opaque blue blocking her view. When she opened the furnace, a fine blue mist escaped and filled the room. Momentarily, Marci was enveloped in the blue of her mother’s death. Staring through the cloud of mourning was like looking into the evening sky, beyond which she could barely make out the fuzzy outline of the muffle-furnace with its own deep cavity on the other side.

And when the dust settled, she was covered in a blue film and she found the ultramarine sitting in a blue-coloured vault, where malign chemicals were once baked into designer drugs.

She removed it with a pair of tongs, careful beyond necessity, as if she was birthing it, the blue, her twin from the feeling of loss itself. After placing it onto the table, she crushed a corner of the brick and spontaneously started weeping, as if she had committed some crime against this brick she had just given life. You see, Marci had grown incredibly attached to the clay during the making of this colour. It had transformed inside the oven and grown inside her mind overnight, becoming a living essence. And the moment she broke the corner of the small, powdery rectangle, she felt she had hurt it, caused it to suffer. Immediately, manically even, she mixed the powdered blue with oil and dripping tears, made it transparent: a thin blue glaze. She rubbed this nurtured blue all over her crimson wall, daubing it with tissues, covering the red in the depth of the heavens. It deepened, opened up space and felt somehow alive. She had breathed life into the walls, made it a womb. When it dried, she knew this would be her bedroom. The terminus of her emotional system, where she could sleep, live, heal."

Good video that inspired me

I know I haven't blogged for a while. I'm busy doing MRIs for research and finishing my book. It's so close to the end.

I saw this video and had to post it. It inspired me so maybe I'll start blogging again.

Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries from Rory O'Sullivan and Simon Bruyn on Vimeo.

98% Grey

I am writing a book. I guess that is one of the main reasons I stopped blogging. It is taking an enormous amount of time.

But I know it is unfair to cut everyone off, seeing how I am a notoriously bad emailer. I will publish some excerpts on lottering dot com for those who are interested.

Just know they are kind of raw. I mean, I am uploading parts I like but they haven't been edited fully. Any comments are welcome. There should be no need to read chronologically, but I am posting the excerpts in the order that they appear in the book.

repause

I have decided to stop blogging temporarily. It may not come as a surprise to you, since posts have gradually petered off anyways. I am far to busy these days and my schedule has changed enough to make it very difficult to find time.

I will use this blog to post only some extraordinary events from time to time...But who knows? Maybe it will come back zombie-like one day in the future. So be ready and know your zombie escape route!

the people's Mario

check out this flash animation.

the people's Mario

the holidays are over

well, I haven`t written in a long time. There are some very good reasons for this.

1.) My good friend, Tom came to visit me.
2.) I had a 10 day vacation and spent it touring around.
3.) The future called and asked for its money back.

I was going to do a big thing about my trip. But you've probably seen most of the pictures of Kyoto. I will instead have to give you the highlights when I remember them.

For now, I will talk about Tokyo. i spent the last few days in Tokyo. We did almost everything you can do in that city. Everything from Shibuya, the busiest intersection in the world, to getting stuck in the National Museum for 5 hours in a freak tropical storm.

Her I am with Tom in Asakusa, where the biggest paper lantern in Japan is. It's a healing place...too bad we got there too late smell the incense from the huge burner. But It was really cool.

This is the pagoda near the shrine. Asakusa shrine is probably the most famous shrine in Tokyo next to Meiji-jinja.

This is the mandatory city view of Tokyo with Tokyo Tower (a red replica of the Eiffle Tour) in the background. It was a beautiful day and the city literally sprawls to the horizon in every direction. It is immensely big. And actually has the same population of all of Canada!!!

This is Tom in a pachinko parlour. Nuff said.

We also stayed in a capsule hotel. Mostly in order to experience all of the possible accomodations Japan has to offer. We stayed in a ryokan, a traditional inn in Kyoto, so aside from a Love Hotel we went slept nearly everywhere. (Sorry Tom, not with you, buddy). But in the capsule you get your own radio, alarm, and TV. When i turned it on there was some Japanese porn on the tube!

This is me when I realised they only have one channel!!!!

We also went to a lot of museums and galleries in Tokyo. My favourite was the 21_21 Design Shift gallery. They curator basically created my dream exhibit. I pretty much designed this kind of art show all through university, but it was never realised. This guy took samples of ever kind of writing throughout the world and typeset it. It was all very beautiful. Unfortunately we weren`t allowed to take pictures...but my camera "accidentally" went off and I got this one, blurry image.

Throughout Tom's trip the weather was perfect. Hot, not too humid, and sunny. The very last day, there was a storm that hit. We were lucky both times it rained. The first time we were in the National museum. We walked through the whole complex twice, reaching the final building just before they closed. The second time we were eating at this nice restaurant. This is the beautiful picture that resulted.

Culture tip #17: Fireworks

Summertime in Japan is fireworks time. After the rainy season companies, towns and cities, and individuals put on enormous fireworks festivals. People flock to them wearing beautiful yukata and drink outside. The fireworks in Kanazawa are consistently better than the biggest displays I've seen in Canada -- or anywhere else for that matter. So without further ado, I'll let you get to the show.








In the Edo period, the two main families who made fireworks were the Tamaya and the Kagiya. So when things heat up, people still shout 'tamaya' and 'kagiya' in response.

summer festivals

Summer is full of festivities in Japan. These pictures come from the Hyakuman Goku Matsuri, the parade celebrating when Lord Maeda entered Kanazawa city the first time. People watch the re-enactment of Samurai walking through the gates and to the castle. Then there is a BIG dance in the main street of the city.

The streets are packed with dancing people. Businesses have their own uniforms, but anyone can join in.



There are many drummers, most of them are ripped Japanese men playing enormous taiko drums, but there are some girls wearing kimonos who also play them...Then there is this girl!

Of course, with any parade there are food and game stalls that follow. The whole park is lined with there stores (most of them apparently run by the lowest level yakuza).
The group of uniformed girls is almost stereotypical Japan.

This is how is looks as you walk through the stalls. There are games, food, toys...video games (This is Japan, after all!)


Here's a traditional game people play. I guess, it's the Japanese 'bobbing for apples'.

They have absolutely every kind of food from Takoyaki...

...to choco-bananas.

But the best part of summer to me, is the people sitting around in yukata.

strange foods

"Good old-fashioned fried egg!"

And after that, you can wash it down with some Plussy juice...whatever that is.

childhood TV

So I know they recently made a Knight Rider movie, but who in their right mind would see it? I mean, you know it`s not going to be as good as when you saw it as a child. Even now, I barely remember any plot. As a child I could forgive the show for not having a story, because it had a car that could talk...But now, i`m an adult and can think about these things. So having a Knight Rider movie (was David Hasselhof in it, by the way?!) would just ruin another childhood memory.

I would rather they made an Airwolf movie, or a Street Hawk one. Remember those? The helicopter that shot down MIGs, and the motorcycle that could boost really fast. They didn`t have plot either, but then neither were those vehicles intelligent. It was just some wicked cool helicopter that lived in a volcano! How can you beat that?! I mean, it didn`t have plot either (not that I could remember) but the music was better than Knight Rider and IT LIVED IN A VOLCANO!!!!

Or MacGyver even. I know that show had a plot. And there was sometimes science involved. But then I also remember the time he made a water powered bomb to escape from prison using a few bed springs and his belt buckle...

Still it was amazing, and would make a movie a thousand times better than Knight Rider. My apologies to anyone who saw the movie and liked it...and also to any Hasselhof fans out there.

the executive colouring book

check it out!!!

Heaven and Hell

Last weekend I climbed Tateyama, the second highest mountain in Japan.
We had to take a cable car up to the top. From there we took a bus to the base station. Then we go from there on foot.

This is the mountain. The tip is covered with a massive cloud, but you can make out the gift shop at the top. Yes! you heard me! A GIFT SHOP!!! For centuries there was a shrine at the top. The monks built a house, then when tourists came, the house became a shop for charms, now it's a gift shop.

The whole mountain was still covered in snow. About 2 meters actually. If you slip down the side, there's no coming back. You'd slide straight into the valley a 1000 meters below. Man, I swear I'd piss myself in fear for the first 3 seconds, then I'd shout "Guys, take a picture! Take a picture!"

This is near the top. The area near the summit was just rocks. Not Fuji style rocks, either. Real rocks.

The summit was incredibly misty and cloudy. The shrine is actually the highest point on the mountain. Totally covered in white, it was a little like being in a waiting room in a virtual reality game.

Yuka taking a picture of Erin and Will.

The climbing was good and the sunset beautiful—although I sadly didn't get a picture of it...However, to me the most interesting part was the area around the base station. The Buddhists claim that Tateyama is holy because it contains 9 views of heaven from the summit at 164 views of hell around the mountain. This sign points towards the area known as 'Hell's Valley'.

Here you can see it literally looks like God wiped his ass on this portion of earth. (And smells like it too).

The signs warn you not to walk on water like Jesus in this area. Also under no circumstance should you fight the gas clouds!

The path you follow is through a sulfur pit. I never knew that sulfur leaves green stains on the ground. But I guess it makes sense.

While everyone else was taking pictures of the green water, or the grey rocks, I couldn't stop snapping pics of the pipes and barrels lying around. I suppose my idea of Hell is like a dirty, fart-smelly place always under construction. I have like 50 pictures of a barrel in this landscape, but I won't bore you all with them.

There were also some natural scenery like this geyser spouting off evil clouds of gas just asking to be punched in the face.





More of hell. Those clouds are actually indescribably BIG...

...and indescribably smelly.