雪 (yuki)

Temple in the snow

white snow replaces white gravel, soft-hard

falling snow plays with time, slowing it

focus shifts, depths change

contrasts

the rocks slowly disappear

following the snow with your eyes

weightlessness, rising

this without sound

then the sun, a hot white spot

through the clouds

colors adjust

and the melt begins

trees remove their blanket

the temple transformed (again)

the end of this act

now captured

Ganjitsu rituals

The second time around.  For every experience there is a first time - your first day of school, your first goal in a soccer match, your first kiss, etc.  Everything that follows is always slightly less dazzling because it is already familiar.  But with familiarity traditions and rituals are established.

Last year I celebrated the new year at Matsunoo Taisha just up the river from my home.  Because I was so moved by this experience I decided to do the same again this year.  After breakfast I walked the 3 1/2 kilometers from Katsura to this Shinto shrine.  The long walk along the river through the mostly fallow farmland was quiet and meditative.  It's easy to drift and become reflective in such an environment.

Matsunoo Taisha was bustling, families eating, drinking and enjoying the New Year's Day customs.  Like the people around me I went through my own ritual, more or less mimicking last year: washing my hands at the chozuya (ablution fountain), buying an omikuji (fortune), drinking kinpaku miki (blessed gold leaf sake) from a masu (square-shaped wooden cup), eating yakisoba, grilled mitarashi dango and bebīkasutera from the many yatai (food stalls).

Again, I found myself drawn to the bonfire.  The heat of the fire and the sake had a  mesmerizing effect.  The smoke and ash swirled around; so too did my thoughts.

I don't believe any ritual however solemn or reverent can alter the course of one's life.  While life’s trajectory remains a mystery, we can nonetheless take comfort in these customs.  God only knows how long I'll be in Japan.  But as long as I am here I'll spend every Ganjitsu (New Year's Day) at Matsunoo Taisha.

Omisoka capsule

I returned from Los Angeles on a late flight.  Tokyo was dead.  I was surprised.  I had expected a different kind of New Year's Eve revelry than Kyoto, something more like New York.  Maybe around Shibuya there was more life.  Not in Shinbashi.

I checked into my little hotel, or rather, my little room in an average-sized hotel.  When most people think of a "capsule hotel" images of Japanese businessmen tucked into a wall of beds usually comes to mind, something like a morgue for the living.  First Cabin Atagoyama thankfully was not that.  It was a stylish, compact accommodation that hovers somewhere between a ship cabin and a college dormitory.  

After getting my room key and a brief explanation in very good English about where things were and how to use them I went up to the Men only floor.  Yes, the floors are segregated.  No canoodling here; this is not a "love hotel".

I couldn't help but notice the similarity to a storage facility: a map to locate your "cabin" was just beyond the touch-key sliding glass door.   Rather than a door there was a rigid, accordion curtain, like the room dividers you might find in a school or hospital.  This slid open to expose the entire room.  I wondered why they offered earplugs when I was checking in.  Now I knew.  I was really too tired, hungry and dirty to care.

I checked my watch.  30 minutes till midnight.  I freshened up and dashed out to find a place to get a bite to eat and a drink to ring in the new year.  The streets were dark and quiet.  Down one street a massage girl came onto me.  She seemed to be the only one out, the only one open for business.

I found a warm, well-lit cafe and sat down for a beer and sushi.  The waitress rang a Salvation Army Santa-style bell at midnight and poured a round of sake for everyone.  At last, I thought, things are going to pick up.  Alas, after the sake and a polite exchange of "akemashite omedeto" nothing more happened, the energy remained just above the lowest setting.

I drank my beer and the free sake and left, the promise of a bed and some sleep too great a lure.

I love スヌーピー

I've seen a lot of movies since I came to Japan.  Most of them have been Japanese films in Japanese without subtitles.  A few have been American or French films with Japanese subtitles.  I love スヌーピー (I love Snoopy, the Japanese title for the Peanuts Movie) is the first movie I've seen that has been dubbed.  Because it is an animated feature, it is hardly noticeable and not really objectionable.  And somehow, despite it's American origins, the voices are pretty spot on.  The Japanese child actor, Fuku Suzuki, who does the voice of Charlie Brown is so convincing you almost believe this is a Japanese cartoon.

I realized halfway through the film my Japanese language ability is almost at the level of an 8-year-old child, the approximate age of Charlie Brown.  I could understand about 50% of the dialogue.  Or maybe it was just because I know these characters so well I could follow along fairly easily.

The Peanuts have been dear to me since I was 8-years-old.  When I learned a new 3D CGI animated Peanuts movie was coming out I was skeptical.  Charles Schulz was a master of simple lines, and even his first foray into animation with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965 did not compromise his wonderful style.  There were a couple details I think missed the mark - Linus' hair, Woodstock's feathers and even Snoopy's fur.  But overall it looked and felt like a Charlie Brown cartoon.

Mostly what pleased me and warmed my heart was director Steve Martino and writers Craig and Bryan Schulz (son and grandson, respectively of Charles) faithfulness to the time period of the original comic strip.  For me, an old geezer, it could have gone completely off the tracks if they had tried to update the story and characters for an 8-year-old in 2015.  There are no mobile phones in the movie, no computers, no video games, not even a television.  The only slightly contemporary reference is a "bouncy tent" at the carnival; that and a few un-Peanuts dance moves.  Charlie Brown and his pals play ice hockey, they fly kites, play hopscotch, read bound books from a library, they write on paper with a pencil.  In one scene Charlie Brown gets tangled up in a telephone cord while talking to Peppermint Patty.  It occurred to me that most of the audience would have no idea what that was.

It is a strange experience to see something like the Peanuts Movie in a foreign land in a foreign language 35 years after the last Charlie Brown feature film I saw in the theatre, and still feel so connected to these characters.

(sigh)

I love スヌーピー

Musing

Sitting with your friends

    laughing

The late afternoon sun

    highlighting a yellow tree branch

A reed in the river

    twirling in the breeze

        like a ballerina

A slice of pear

        and a glass of champagne

We grow older

Still digging

A steep staircase (almost a ladder) on a dimly lit street called Nishikiyamachi-dori.  Curiosity.  Jazz from another era (another country for that matter) beckons me.  Were this 1925 in New York or Chicago it would be a speakeasy.  But this is not 1925 and this is not the States.  Tagai is not a retro bar; it is not a replica of that time or those places.  It is not even that old.  The owner tells me he opened it eleven years ago.  How he has created such a wonderful lived-in, wabi-sabi aesthetic in such a relatively short time is a Japanese mystery.

This 16-seat hole-in-the-wall izakaya reminds me of Tiki-Ti in Los Angeles for some reason. Perhaps it is the size, or the collection of figurines perched on the bar, or the warm patina of the aged wood, washi paper and hundreds of sake labels that cover the walls.  As much as anything, it is the warmth of the man standing behind the bar.  The hippest joint, the most chic establishment, the most famous or historic place falls flat if the staff is not friendly and inviting.  In five minutes I felt as if an old friend were welcoming me home.

There are a million places in Kyoto, obscure and famous, yet to be experienced.  I'm still digging.

The Kimono Queen

Perhaps I've written this before in these pages.  Things happen to me here in Japan that wouldn't happen anywhere else.  I don't think there is an American equivalent to the "Kimono Queen", but if there were, I'm sure I would not be asked to do a photo shoot with her.

My friends Okamoto-san and Uchiyama-san at be-kyoto gallery needed someone to play a Western tourist for a PR project they were working on.  Of course they called me.

I sat in the serene washitsu of this machiya-turned-gallery with the lovely current "Kyoto Hospitality Ambassador" and former "Kimono Queen", Noriko Zugawa dressed in a gorgeous pearl-colored kimono.  For the shoot she was to serve me tea, point out the highlights in a Kyoto tourist brochure and show me the fine art of ikebana flower arrangement.

She arrived terribly late so the perfect afternoon light was rapidly slipping away.  This meant there was no time for small talk or getting acquainted.  Uchiyama-san sat me uncomfortably close to this immaculately dressed stranger with piercing black eyes and quickly began shooting.  Her close proximity and self-possessed gaze made me rather nervous.  Uchiyama-san, like any good photographer, helped us, or rather me, relax by making us laugh.

Zugawa-san asked me things in Japanese that I sometimes understood and sometimes didn't.  Thankfully Okamoto-san was just off camera to translate when I stumbled.  There was something about her that reminded me of someone I knew, but I couldn't think of who it was.

The shoot was over almost as quickly as it had begun.  There was a long series of bows and "arigato gozaimasu".  Then Zugawa-san was whisked away with her stylist in a big, black, luxury sedan.