Month: April 2003

Viewing The Apricot Blossoms

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Temperatures in the Nagano area broke into the 20s (Celsius) yesterday, and suddenly it feels like winter is really gone. Today felt more like what I’d think of as a Seattle summer day. The flowering trees are blooming, and the cherry trees should be in full bloom this weekend, perfect timing for the parties that will crowd beneath the trees in parks throughout the city.
Plum and apricot trees bloom earlier than the cherry trees, and this morning I went with a friend to see apricot orchards the small town of Mori, south of Nagano.
The photo above is the idealized version of this season — all flowers, beauty and nature. Unfortunately, beauty and nature in Japan are usually accompanied by hordes of sightseers, tour buses, traffic jams, parking lots with uniformed attendants, old men with big cameras, souvenir shops, food vendors, and a healthy dose of concrete.
Since my friend and I arrived early in the day, we missed the big crowds. Less than a hundred other people were milling around, taking in the view and buying plenty of dried apricots and apricot-flavored ice cream.
The three photos below show the less picturesque side of the outing: the parking attendant giving my friend, Kinuko, an area map; one of the parking lots with the Japanese equivalent of a double-wide trailer serving as a souvenir/ice cream shop; a red and white stripped blossom-viewing platform.
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Saddamy

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Huh? Saddam Starred in Gay Porn Films
The article is dated April 10, but I swear it must be a typo — the ‘0’ accidentally added when an intern fell onto the keyboard laughing while typing an April Fools story. If that’s not the case, the boys in the U.S. propaganda department are getting a little out of control.
(link via Trash Addict)

Questions About A Wandering Mind

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Often while I’m reading, my mind will wander from the text at hand and I’ll end up thinking about something else. But I never stop reading, which strikes me as a bit strange. I usually have to go back over the section I just read but didn’t pay attention to.
It’s almost like a train that reaches a split in the tracks. Instead of continuing along just one track, some sort of freaky parallel dimension opens and the train is able to travel along both tracks. But only one train continues to carry the conductor.
I was reading an article on autism tonight, and this happened. But rather than just snap myself back into the reading material, as I typically do, I started to ponder what was going on — probably because I was reading something about how the brain works. And then I started to think it was something I could write about on my blog, so in my mind I started to form what to write. And suddenly I was another full paragraph further along in the story.
Immediately following these episodes, I’m conscious of the fact that I have read every single word of a section of text, despite the fact that nothing has sunk in to my brain. And I wonder, why do I continue reading? Why not just stop to think about something else? Is the information I’m reading but not remembering going somewhere in my brain — perhaps to a place I’m just not able to access? Are there people who are able to do this — have a completely separate track of thoughts while reading — but who remember everything they’ve read?
Um, okay. Back to my autism article…

Four Generations On Fuji-san

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fuji_1916.jpg
My grandmother, Isabel Alexander Gerhard, was born in 1910 at the foot of Mt. Fuji, in Gotemba. The photo above (larger version) shows her on the mountain when she was six years old — likely in late August, just after her sixth birthday. She is the one in the background, fourth from the right. The rest of the party includes my great-grandmother, great-grandfather, a great-aunt, my grandmother’s older brother, Bob, and her sisters, Frankie and Mary.
In my grandmother’s memoirs, she quotes the story of the climb as written by her mother:

During the summer of 1916 we all climbed Fuji. Sister Bessie went with us. As we plodded on, we often stopped to rest, and many Japanese climbers offered to carry little six-year-old Isabel, but she refused all help. The night was spent at the eighth station, where Bob got mountain-sick, and Frankie, although tied up in a cotton bag, was nearly eaten up by fleas. Wrapped up in our bedding we went outside to see a wonderful sunrise which tinted the fleecy clouds all the colors of the rainbow. Here and there through rifts in the clouds we had glimpses of the blue lakes around the base of the mountain. It was bitterly cold, but we were protected somewhat from the wind by wrapping pieces of matting around us. Here and there were vents in the side of the mountain from which issued hot air, where we could warm our hands.
On the way down, the children enjoyed running and sliding in the scoria. Isabel and I were all in by the time we reached the third station, so we hired a horse, Isabel riding in front of me. The path was so steep that we kept slipping forward on to the horse’s neck, so we finally decided that it took more energy to keep on the horse than to walk. It was a tired crowd who arrived at the house in Ninooka the evening of the second day.

This, of course, was in the days before a road was built to the Fifth Station, which effectively cut the climb in half for most climbers. My grandmother, from her memoirs:

I’m not sure how many times I climbed Fuji. Maybe something like six and two halves. The Japanese have a saying, “If you don’t climb Fuji, you are a fool. If you climb more than once, you’re a fool.” So I guess I’m hopeless. The climbing season is strictly July and August. But Paul (PVG) climbed it with two friends on December 31, 1935. Bob Alexander climbed in the winter, and in April 1981, Bob and Sharon climbed from Station Five to the top using crampons and ice axes. We are unhappy with the road built up to the Fifth Station. It opens the climb up to too many people and litterbugs. There used to be so many pilgrims dressed in white with their Fuji poles. When Paul, Marilyn and I climbed in 1967, we didn’t see one single pilgrim on the mountain.

Paul (PVG) is my grandfather, Paul V. Gerhard. Marilyn is one of my three aunts who were born in Tokyo before the family moved from Japan to the United States in 1941.
The photo below is of my grandfather on Fuji. The caption on the back of the photo, in my grandmother’s handwriting, reads: “Paul V. Gerhard on the summit of Fuji San Jan. 1, 1934.” That date seems to conflict with the 1935 climb she mentioned in her memoirs — I imagine it’s the same climb and the date on either the photo or in the memoirs is wrong.
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As my grandmother mentioned, my parents — Bob and Sharon — climbed Fuji in April 1981 during a family visit to Japan with my grandparents. The photo below is of them at the summit — no sunrise for them. During their climb, my two sisters and I stayed at a hut near the Fifth Station. I was 13 at the time.
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I made the summit of Fuji last September, but the weather at the top was so miserably cold, windy and wet that I didn’t take a summit photo. This shot is on the way down, after dropping below the clouds that encircled the top of the mountain. I wrote about the climb last September.
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I’d like to climb Fuji again, just for the chance of seeing the sunrise and the view from the summit. But next time, I think I’d better start from the bottom rather than from the Fifth Station. After all, if my grandmother could do it at age six…

Tricky Dick Gets No Respect In Iraq

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The other day on NPR’s Morning Edition, Anne Garrels reported from Baghdad that looters had been stripping bare the mansions of Iraq’s former leadership. She mentioned that at Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz’s mansion, everything was gone except for a few books, one of which was by Richard Nixon.