Musing

Sharp yellow light
clinging to the dying afternoon
spreading its fingers 
across the land

slow blue fog
caressing hilltops
touching skin

cool air smelling of burning green wood

white river 
falling
over rocks
like the Pacific surf roar

For a moment
it feels like California

lost

米 Kome Part III

Living in Katsura I see things people in the heart of Kyoto don't see.  Situated along the Katsura River it is a semi-rural community with small farms occupying as much real-estate as homes and businesses.  This means I see farmers at work doing their thing.  I see the land tilled, seeds sewn and the crops harvested.  I imagine for the average Japanese person this is terribly mundane.  But for a non-native city boy it is all very interesting.

When I arrived last September the kome (rice) was ready for harvest (see my post from October 18).  I watched through the winter and spring as these fallow fields were plowed and harrowed over and over.  Small sections of the less than one-acre plots were planted with different vegetables: cabbage, beans, etc., but mostly the land lay bare.

At the end of May something curious happened.  Following days of intense ploughing, the fields were suddenly flooded with water.  There is a complex network of little channels that seem to criss-cross every street in Katsura.  I assumed these functioned as kinds of storm drains.  This may be.  But they also function as an irrigation system diverting water from the river to the rice paddies.

Rice seedlings at planting

The fields, now under about 6 inches (15cm) of water, turned a bright, almost neon green.  I couldn't determine if this was a natural occurring phenomenon or an agricultural additive.  The planting came next and was remarkably swift.  Trays of rice seedlings were fed through a small jet-ski-shaped tractor pushed along by the farmer in his tall rubber boots.  This machine saves him from the back breaking labor of sticking the seedlings into the murky water by hand one at a time.  It also makes for incredibly straight and perfectly spaced rows of rice plants.

The frogs arrive about the same time as the rice seedlings.  As soon as the sun sets each day they begin singing.  It is a hilarious chorus that fills the warm nights interrupted only by a passing dog.  Where did they come from I wonder.  And where do they go during the day?  I've yet to see one of these raucous amphibians.

Rice plants after 3 weeks

Soundtrack for a bicycle ride

An acquaintance of mine invited me to see her band play at the Kyoto nightclub Metro.  I was here last autumn and was fairly blown away by the band I saw, so I had high hopes.

Her band, ni-hao (ニーハオ), is a crazy, all-girl experimental punk band.  I haven't seen such energy and chaos on stage since...uh, high school?  Four girls, including two drummer/singers in shorts and color-coded soccer socks making an unholy and cheerful racket.  They've got their own sound which does not really invite comparisons.  They call it "cheer punk" which seems a good description because it is not unlike the chanting you hear on a football terrace, albeit way more explosive, or even the call-and-response patterns found in jazz and other African-American music.

Ni-hao was followed by a band on the other side of the musical spectrum.  If ni-hao were a thunder storm filling Metros small stage with their brash, avant-garde punk, the electro duo, Emerald Four were a soft, spring shower.  Strange, but cool to have two totally different bands on the same bill.

I was skeptical when I saw the MacBook come out on a little table.  I got ready to leave.  A simple tonal melody over spartan beats floated out of the computer.  Then the singer, a cute girl with a Jean Seberg crop, began singing.  Her breathy, far-away voice sounded like it was coming down through the mist in the nearby Higashiyama mountains.  There was a wonderful melancholia to their music that drifted out of the club speakers.  It seemed to me somehow quintessentially Japanese, almost a musical expression of some Buddhist concept.  Of course I had no idea what the lovely elfin singer was singing about as she wandered around the stage as if slightly lost.  But the dreamy, ethereal sound made me think of that most Japanese concept - wabi sabi.  Emerald Four makes bright, cinematic music for riding a bicycle along the river on a sunny afternoon.

Emerald Four "Love Labyrinth"