…a frock, with flip-flops. We were playing frisbee in the rain.
Category: Entries with Images
Nothing Butt Options
Now that spring has arrived, it’s time to turn off the heated toilet seat that served me so well during the cold winter months. Mine is just a simple model, with a small temperature control knob for the heated seat. Other toilets in Japan offer many more options, like the one above with its handy remote console panel.
Let’s see, looks like there’s the butt-washing option, and then a breast-washing option? Huh? Okay, at least the off button is really obvious. But what are those squiggly arrows that make it look like some sort of exchange of fluids is involved? I was unable to get the live video technical support (on the right) to work.
Quality Television
While your television is gathering dust during TV Turnoff Week, you can ease the withdrawals by watching these clips of a Japanese television show featuring bar hostesses settling old scores on the mat.
In a dark room, a crowd of hostesses (the women who entertain clients at certain kinds of bars) crowd around a mat, where two of them wrestle, punch, pull hair and constantly have to pull down their mini skirts. The winner gets to shove a pie in the face of the loser.
Clip One: The Fight (QuickTime Movie 2MB)
Clip Two: The Pie (QuickTime Movie 1.5MB)
The show continued with a segment that included women in bikinis reading off their body measurements and jump roping (in heels, by the sound of it).
Clip Three: Bikini Jump Roping (QuickTime Movie 3MB)
Shoes And Skirt At A Sunday BBQ
Four Generations On Fuji-san
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.
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.
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.
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…
Loud, Loud, Loud
I can’t wait for the local elections to be over. The political sound trucks are out all day, broadcasting speeches by politicians or, even worse, just driving around downtown repeating the candidates’ names over and over and over and over. The voices from the loudspeakers are at full volume, and bounce from building to building in the downtown area. I have to keep my window closed at work because the noise from the loudspeakers with the window open makes it too difficult for my students to hear.
The amount of noise pollution in urban Japan is almost beyond description — you really have to experience it to appreciate the scope of the problem. Booming voices are everywhere, music comes from the strangest places, announcements and warnings are ubiquitous, shouts of welcome greet you at stores and restaurants, and giant television screens broadcast everything from news and commercials to music videos and travelogues.
A crosswalk in downtown Nagano has two separate visual clues alerting pedestrians when to walk, accompanied by a chime, a melody and a voice announcement — all playing simultaneously. This crosswalk is in front of the Nagano train station, where the top of the hour is marked by both an extraordinarily loud chime and a multimedia presentation on the jumbo screen. Try crossing the crosswalk at the top of the hour and you find yourself in an audio typhoon.
As much as I’ve grown fairly accustomed (though not happily) to all this aural clutter, I just can’t handle the political sound trucks. At least in America when you’re sick of the worst aspects of political campaigning you can just keep the television turned off. Here, you’d have to live on the top of a mountain, where only the faint, distant echo of a politician’s name would reach you.
Suwa Mirror
Suwa is a small city — or a large town — nestled in the mountains of central Nagano Prefecture. It encircles Suwa Lake, upon which giant swans and turtles ferry passengers. This shot captures the mountains, lake and one of the giant swan boats in the mirrored surface of a lakeside sculpture.
Zenkoji Go-kai-chyou Receiving Ceremony
Last Sunday saw the unofficial start of Nagano’s most important festival — the Zenkoji Go-kai-chyou. This festival is held only once every seven years at Zenkoji Temple, when a sacred statue of Buddha is revealed to the public. I’m still trying to put together background information on the festival and on Zenkoji, so I’m going to save that for a later post.
The event on Sunday was to celebrate the delivery of a wooden pillar from Matsushiro (a neighboring city) to Zenkoji. The pillar plays a central role in the Go-kai-chyou festival.
I’ve posted photos of the procession and the subsequent ceremony at Zenkoji, along with some videos and sound clips. The video clips will be up on the Photos & Flicks page for a limited time.
The photos are here.
Shadows & Light
MacDara also snapped some great shots of the interior of a cinema while waiting for the show to start.
Hubble Captures Light Echo
These are time-lapse images of an erupting star, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The first image was taken in May 2002, and the final image seven months later in December 2002. You can get more information and see additional photos on the Hubble Site.
(Thanks to ChariOtaku for this link.)