random walkings

“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel! We’re just trying to put the wheels on the bus.”
-Me

Christopher Noss: 1869-1934: Kitayama Reien, Sendai. 1447h 15 Feb. I can go home now.

Oh and the other ones kind of stand for themselves. Matt wrestled sumo. I shot a flock of seagulls (just a sniper LENS, though). We went snow tubing at a willy-wonka-esque chocolate factory at the end of the subway in Sapporo. And yes there’s a ton more but there’s not enough time! Soon!

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It’s off to Tsuruga (kanji i just learned, 敦賀). 1445 rapid on the kosei line… then 15 minutes on some bus with no romaji signs, but a woman working at the Kyoto TIC wrote out a Japanese phrase that i can show people to find it (thank you TIC woman!!)… and then 20 hours on a tatami mat on a Shin Nihonkai ferry (thanks for reading japanese website for me matt!) Next blogging, from hokkaido. Yuki-matsuri!!

well, imean, takoyaki really is little balls with octopus inside. 300yen for eight of `em.

(oh, and i`m still alive and well! and having a fantastic adventure that will make it online sooner or later) (with photographic proof that i ran into colin the guy with my mtn hardware jacket again in kyoto this time; and that matt competed in a mini sumo competition at the largest bonfire i`ve ever seen; and stories about sitting in a mister donut for five hours drinking bottomless cups of coffee; and and and)

tis not quite the wild blue, rather, its the so-called cultural
capital of japan… and i suppose they probably ‘have the same shit
they got here, it’s just a little different.’ But any way it goes, it
should bring me back with some good stories and maybe a couple
pictures… there is a 20 hour ferry ride up the sea of japan, from
tsuruga in kansai to tomakoma on hokkaido! Leaves at midnight on the
8th, gets there about 8:30pm on the 9th!

and from thence to Sapporo, land of yuki-matsuri (for those of you
who’ve seen the animatrix, think of what color that cat named yuki
was… white… it means snow!! crazy!!) and matsuri = (in my book
anyways) crazy big traditional japanese festival, kinda like san
fermin without the bulls! and a hotel found via gaurav’s mom, the
travel agent extraordinaire!

after that, potentially returning to the relative normalcy of
kawasaki, kamakura, and tachikawa (?) or potentially reading and
re-reading the wwoof japan booklet, to find a traditional japanese cow
farm to muck stalls and shovel snow (?) or potentially who knows what.

up 0430. eat can of boiled eggs in soy sauce (improvised breakfast) 0440. jog to musashi-kosugi 0500. ride the tokyu corporation’s toyoko line to naka-meguro, arr 0534. catch tokyo metro’s hibiya line 0537. switch to toei corporation’s oedo line at roppongi station 0551. 0602h, after that snapshot of tokyo train confusion (each company’s line has different ticket, different map, different stations sometimes…) wham it’s tsukiji.

three-wheeled carts flying everywhere, bicycles, mopeds, motorized tricycles, old-school pushcarts laden with tuna (at 10,000usd per) all threatening to flatten the pedestrian not fast enough to duck into a niche. fresh tuna under 5foot long knives. frozen tuna in bandsaws, or stacked like logs. everything else under the sun that comes from the sea, stacked, unstacked, and restacked in a towering maze of styrofoam (that all gets heat cleaned, melted, and re-formed for the next day’s 2000tons of sea-products. it’s a trip that has to be experienced to be understood. just, don’t take large backpacks, don’t expect to stay together with a group, never wear sandals, and for goodness sake, don’t bring any kids.

and, don’t expect to see anything past 8am. Except, a really awesome sushi bar found by a random hostel tour I crashed (thanks Tomoe for letting me join y’all!!) that included this nice bloke (conner? im sorry but i’ve totally forgotten your name!) who had my mtn hardware jacket. small world. El mundo es un panuelo. And muchas gracias a Salvador y Cristina, me ha disfrutado muchisimo conociendonos!

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check out these awesome tuna photos

Will attempt to confirm that each of these babies goes for 10k usd. geez, wouldn’t you like to catch one of those?!

oh, and turns out harvard has a world expert on the tsukiji: Theodore Bestor, source for LG’s Tsukiji 2-page spread. Is pretty darn good, for starting at 4:30am :-p

nope, i don’t speak a word of it. if i could just have them at konnichiwa, it’d be ok! as it is it’s been the longest most amazing two weeks of my life:

• met a guy on the street in kamakura, literally: we were walking past each other outside this surf shop– and talked for an hour standing there and got invited to crash at his place. then went inside surf shop and met the owners, his friends. then went down the road towards the beach, and met this other couple and their two kids, also his friends. they cooked dinner for us. this was my, fifth day in japan?
• day 6, still in kamakura, met a japanese couple in a chinese food shop– and chatted sitting on a park bench, and then got invited to their house for dinner, and randomly this was state-of-the-union tuesday. so watched, and talked about, the state of the union. oh and got invited to crash there if i missed my last train home.
• found the house my grandfather was born in, in aizu-wakamatsu; and met the woman who lives next door now, and takes care of the house… had tea with them at 8:30am.

And it’s only been, two weeks tomorrow. Pictures, still haven’t re-learned how to post them up here. Will have to play with gallery and get that going. But for now, it’s a trickle of randomness, that’s going to semi-track how i’ve been walking around the world. And semi-help to share the discoveries I’ve made. Namely, that everybody’s fundamentally the same, no matter where the hell they live. And whatever their culture might be, we can do worse than learn a bit about it and respect it a bit more than we do. Even I am guilty of failing in both regards, even while here, and it’s been a humbling experience. Will have to do better. Will strive to show that experience, up here in front of all, for the betterment of all us citizens of the world.

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little itty bitty hiking trail off to the northwest of kamakura. sounds of construction and trains but its green and brouwn like cloud for rest bootpacked and worn away with iron spikes to hold rock in, twisting pick your own path up and down and hide like aparment complex and rolling hill distance. tshirt hiking january. blue w hazy puffy clouds. train noise again. caw caw. the sound of running zen in hills.

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