back from tokyo

it’s not often that we get to take little trips together like this. and i’m not even talking about trips that people are used to, like say, a week or so, that’s kinda impossible with his job, just little 2-day trips. talk about ironic, since i have a job that gives me an obscene amount of free time, and a 2 consecutive off days like this is a luxury to him. so, we were kinda excited for this one, even though both of us aren’t exactly big fans of tokyo. we had ghibli and cirque du soliel planned, and disney if we still had the energy or time the next day. and i planned for us to take the bus back at 2:40 from tokyo so he could have ample time to rest up for his work week ahead.

back in the hotel on the first night, i asked him what he enjoyed the most that day. “めいと子猫バス”, he said. it is the cutest thing ever. if you’ve watched my neighbor totoro before, you probably would know the neko bus. in this short film we got to watch in studio ghibli, the baby cat bus makes his appearance and he has the grinniest grin.  and furry balls too!

when i asked about the opposite, he said it was how we nearly couldn’t get onto the bus in the morning. yes, i made a huge blooper with my bus tickets reservation and it would have cost us our trip to tokyo, or at least totally screwed the schedule up.

and that sweetest guy never made a peep about it before i asked.

the most stressful part of the day for me was having to find a Family Mart in tokyo to pay for the return bus tickets right before our cirque du soliel show. it was obviously my fault, but as my stress level built up walking aimlessly around looking for a convenience store, he held my hand, and told me everything was gonna be alright. that’s why i love this guy, and that’s why till this day, we never actually did have a quarrel.

and when we finally found the store, paid for our reservation and was making our way back, he pointed out the smiling moon in the sky to me.

we made it back to aizu the next day and the same smiling moon was featured on tv. apparently, it’s a pretty rare phenemon and the last time it occurred was about 2 1/2 years ago.

「きっといいことがあるよ」 he said, smiling at me.

 

わたしはわたし

 

oze bright and blue

on our way…

there! to hikingu♪

 

a post full of colours

pictures from the design festa* gotta love the things they wear.

i couldn’t resist the namecards. i mean who can resist pandas with twinkly eyes and pigs in briefs. aliceandthecat.com if you are interested. oh, and he’s not the artist but the agent. and italian too. but for a split second, when the flashes of cameras that suddenly appeared behind me went off, he broke into a j-worthy pose.

gotta love the things they wear part II. the cutie with the blonde hair and big white bow is a HE! he knew that i knew and was looking away, all uncomfortable, the whole time. how kawaii <3 love the CD hat too. and lots of bondage-animal sightings.

too cute. what more can i say!

one of my favourite installations. for the sake of art, she was stuck there in that awkward sitting position pretending to read a book under really dim orange light. and all i can think of is pins and needles. ouch.

another nice booth and installation with cool models thrown in for good measure: the ever photogenic cynthia,

and meriel and jason. i love their spontaneity! the picture would have been so blah without them.

it was a good weekend trip despite having been on an energy low for the past week. i met up with my ex-housemate, her hubby and sister too. if there’s one thing i’m blessed with, it is that i’m surrounded by really kind people. there are lots of things that i’m leaving unwritten, but i just want to say that i’m always counting my blessings.

and now, to break out of this inertia i have been feeling for so long.

 

ZAOに行ってきました

this winter, i have collected 10 snowboarding lift passes. it may sound like quite a bit but i have to admit that 2-3 hours is all it takes to tire me out each time. i do enjoy boarding though i’m not particularly crazy about it like some of my friends are. i remember skiing for the first time in my first winter in japan thinking that i could definitely live without this falling all over the snow thing. and I was even more against the idea of having both feet strapped to a board, especially when both of them are left. but when my second winter came, the desire for a shared activity between us meant that falling all over the snow was inevitable, not to mention bruises in places mentionable and unmentionable, a nearly twisted neck, fear, happiness, and finally a sense of achievement that a clumsy person like me could actually snowboard.

this trip to Zao probably marks the end of my snowboarding season. there are still places in this region where the snow remains in board-able condition till late april but spring is definitely here in my little city and i’m going give my board a well-deserved rest and welcome spring. though the flowers are not yet in bloom and the trees are still looking quite sad and twiggy without the green foliage nor snow blankets over them, the blue sky is quite enough to make up for the view. sparrows are chirping outside my apartment, which is all nice and cute until they merrily crap all over the walkway. but in any case, spring is sweet.

we went to zao on the 11th and 12th to snowboard and soak up the hot spring. it just happened that his infrequent 2-day leave coincided with the high school entrance examinations (one of those times when the only person in the entire school with nothing to do is me). we reached Zao at 1-ish after a 3-hour drive to Yamagata prefecture, left all our stuffs at a ryokan and hit the slopes. Zao is huge. it was a little grey and snowy on that day, but still enjoyable. i would say that the snow was in good condition, considering that it is March already. the only complaint was that most of the runs we did were quite short. we definitely did a lot of lift-riding that day. my battery lifespan of 2-3 hours applies even on an unexplored mountain. i’m just grateful that he is always accommodating to me. if he was a board-crazy maniac raring to explore every single nook, corner and lift, i would have been very very miserable.

in Zao, there are monsters. when snow and strong, icy winds crash into big fir trees, strange giant monoliths, known as 樹氷 (juhyou), emerge. we went to see them on the second day, sans board plus good camera in hand. while the wind was insane at the peak, the sky was a pretty shade of blue.

the best time to see the 樹氷 is february and i would imagine that the landscape looked all the stranger then. the reward for having endured a bitterly long and cold february for me came in the form of the snow monsters still looking beautifully intact at this time of the year. with spring setting in, the snow is due to melt away. but even so, the trees at lower altitudes are still looking mighty awesome with green branches sticking out.

you can allow your imagination to run wild looking at these strange giants. for me, they are an army of petrified snow wizards contorting in the effort to break the spell cast on them.

up at the peak, everybody was trying hard not to get blown over by wind, but we all managed happy smiles and poses for the camera. because it was that beautiful.

and if possible, i would be back next season, riding amidst the snow monsters.

 

back from the island

as the summer vacation was drawing nearer and most Jets were planning to make big summer trips either back to their home countries or to some other nice and faraway places, i was fretting over how not to spend the entire obon period alone in the staff room in school. obon is a period where most of the japanese take leave from work and return to their hometowns; the spirits of their ancestors also making that trip back home for a family reunion.

so i decided to visit a friend who was also returning to her hometown in 佐渡島(sadogashima), an island off the coast of a nearby city 新潟(niigata). she was happy to have me for a few days, and i was grateful not to be cooped up in my stuffy apartment during the time when ancestral spirits roam the land. my host in sado island is nozomi, which means hope in japanese. she’s a junior high school english teacher in aizu and i meet her every now and then for aikido practice. i met her very hospitable father, mother and brother, and also her super energetic, mailman-and-newspaperman-hating miniature pinscher, umi. he seemed particularly interested in my arm or leg when i was there, “hugging” it at every given opportunity.

sado island in summer is as beautiful as one of my colleagues claimed it to be. wide, open beaches, cliffs overlooking the sea, aquamarine blue, turquoise green, all in the same expanse of water

one of the tourist attractions nozomi brought me to was the gold mine. sado island used to be an island for exiles. it served as a place of banishment for difficult political figures who lost in their struggle for power. a famous poet, an emperor, a buddhist monk and a noh dramatist were among the famous ones. in the edo era, a gold mine was found in the island and homeless people were packed up and sent to sado as labourers.

when i stepped foot into the mine, i was surprised at how cold it was. the question many people seemed to be asking was if the mine is naturally that cold. one can only imagine how hard life was for the labourers during winter.

the other place i went to was the Noh theatre. Noh began in sado island with the banishment of Zeami, known also as the father of Noh. i didn’t get the chance to watch a real Noh play, but i don’t think i’d have been able to sit through two hours of slow-motioned shuffling anyway. i was quite contented to watch the star feature of the theatre: dressed-up robots (yes! all robots in the pictures) moving around, crooning, and playing their instruments for a comfortable 15 minutes or so.

out of the all the places i have been to in sado (not that many), my favourite area has to be 小木(Ogi), the place where the Earth Celebration was held. it was probably the atmosphere of the festival i was feeling but i thought even the buildings there felt hippie, in a relaxed, old, japanese way, if hippie, relaxed, old and japanese put in the same sentence makes any sense at all.

and my favourite tourist spot is 矢島経島, also in ogi. this is the place where tourist can ride in wooden-bathtub boats rowed by women wearing cool pointy straw hats with a little red ribbon stuck on it. as we drove down the narrow, winding road flanked by traditional-looking japanese houses, the rain poured down hard and heavy on us for the first time since temperatures started hovering around 36-39 degrees in japan. the rain lent an almost movie-like atmosphere to the place all of a sudden. and when the rain finally let up, we could walk around.

the last picture was taken when i was bopping around in the tub as well. yay for new camera! and did i mention light? perfect for lazy me. before i end, i should introduce you to the guardians of the island. you see, what is an island without masked rangers the likes of ultra-man protecting it. and the name of the squad of gold, blue and red ranger protecting Sadogashima is called the…

サドガシマンSadogashi man!