Saturday, May 20, 2006

Around The World in 80 Minutes

Our last day in Kinugawa Onsen was very rainy, so we couldn't go river-rafting as we'd planned. Instead, we took a short taxi ride to Tobu World Square and enjoyed unmatched views of the world's greatest architecture. It took about 80 minutes to get through it all, and all of the exhibits were really cool. According to the brochure, the models are 1/25 replicas of the originals, and in most cases, artists and/or architects actually went to the original sites and made measurements and stuff.

Friday, May 19, 2006

At Kinugawa Onsen

The Wisconsin-ALT Mid Year Recontracting Conference is a nice big way to say it, but it's more like a small workers' retreat, since the number of ALTs on the Wisconsin-Chiba program are a handful (this year there are only four of us) and the locations chosen for our get-togethers are usually nice spots for tourism outside of Chiba prefecture. Last year we ventured west to Yamanashi Prefecture and stayed at a ryokan on lake Kawaguchi, which is in the Fuji 5 Lakes Region and has a splendid view of Mt. Fuji; this year, we went north to Tochigi Prefecture and stayed in a cozy little hotel in the resort town of Kinugawa Onsen.

We took a private train from Asakusa in Tokyo and chatted for 3 hours as the landscape changed from urban sprawl to countryside. After changing trains only once, we ended up at Kinugawa Onsen Station, and from there it was about a 10 minute walk to our conference site: the quaint, if a bit run-down Hotel New Sakura. Once we found our rooms and divvied up the beds, we all gathered together for our conference meeting.

I think it lasted an hour, tops.

The rest of the time was spent partaking in intercultural-awareness activities (i.e. touring famous places, eating Japanese cuisine, and enjoying the hot-spring spas).

The hotel is situated along one side of the Kinu river. I got up early on Thursday to walk around and see what there is to see and found that Kinugawa has 5 bridges, and the three that I covered had little stamp stations on them, so of course I got out my trusty notebook and stamped. I asked the front desk workers at the hotel when I got back and they gave me a map with the Kinugawa Bridge Stamp Challenge on it. The brochure said that if I mailed it in to somewhere they'd send me a neat-o little plastic charm, so I resolved to obtain all 5 stamps the next chance I got. I found out Friday morning, while braving the torrential downpours on my noble quest, that the stamp stations don't exist anymore (except on the bridges I'd already been to) and that the Bridge Stamp Challenge was finished who knows how many years ago.

Aside from the Bridge Stamp Fiasco, the town is a nice place to walk. Basically you go up one side of the river gorge and down the other side, crossing bridges whenever the mood strikes. A very scenic place, and I can see how it'd feel even more cozy in the wintertime.

Of course I took pictures.

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Random Scenes From Japanese Life

Every so often we go walking around from place to place, and see interesting things. The first one is common enough. A farmer plowing his rice field.



The next one is of a 24 hour rice vending machine. The funniest part is that ATMs in Japan close at 7 or 8 p.m, so if you need quick cash some weekend whilst out on the town, you're out of luck; yet if you suffer late night hunger pains for a steamy bowl of sticky-rice, help is just around the corner!



This last one is cute. But at twenty bucks a picture was enough for me.

All Aboard the X-ray Bus!

Yup, it's that time of year again. Gather 'round and get your number, because the X-ray Bus is comin' to school.

-Actually, this was approx. 2 weeks ago, but I didn't want let it get lost in the shuffle.

I also got to take a pee test, but I'll spare you the pictures of that one. And they wouldn't let me sign up for the poo test because I was too young, but I figured I'd try to sign up for all these tests while I still can, seeing as we pay for health insurance each month. Anyway, the pictures...



Monday, May 08, 2006

Popularity

After garnering rave reviews here for my work here, the famous "snif" picture was brought up (see comments on the former link above). While not Japan-related, it merits posting because I have one of the few extant copies left of the famous picture.

Said to be done during his Shiftwork Period, Dad's "Snif" conveys a message of harmony and universal understanding through juxtaposition of class-conscious, bourgeoise meta-norms (personified in the angular geometry of two dogs meeting for the first time) with a mundane, relativistic narrative of power-struggle and information-exchange symbolised via the spatial relationship of dynamic forms wrought by the force of the artist's deft penstrokes. The fine draftsmanship of the work belies the primal ruggedness of its overall message while slyly obfuscating the almost too obvious normative approach to pen-and-ink drawings taken by the artist to this theme (an approach said to be definitive of his style during that period).

Saturday, May 06, 2006

More Recently

This week, the weather stopped flirting with Spring and made it official: from here on in (until the rainy season) it'll be warm and getting warmer. So to celebrate, all the flowers are blooming. These tulips were donated to Toke H.S. by the Takeyama's, the same people who dressed Laurie in kimono when they had us over for a nice Christmas dinner.



We recently walked to Togane from our apartment (it was a Saturday or two ago, actually) and got to see the rice fields beginning to turn green.



Even more recently, we took the train to Togane and walked from there to the ocean (an 8km jaunt for anyone keeping track). The wind was chilly, so we stayed long enough to browse for shells (didn't bring a comb) and have a picnic of onigiri and bottled tea before heading back.



Most recently, the Koi-Nobori were hung up in Showa-no-Mori. Koi-Nobori are windsocks that look like giant, colorful goldfish. The largest ones are probably 12 feet long or so. If I could figure out where to buy the big ones I'd for sure send some home so Dad could hang them up with his flag collection.