On the move

It goes like this:

Imabari to Toyo shi, by bicycle - I leave in ten minutes and my ETA at the Toyo Ferry Port is 9:15, give or take.

Overnight ferry to OOOOOOsaka. Arrive 6:30 AM, reach Shin-Osaka station by 7:30 (god willing) and board the first of a number of local trains to wend me up throught Honshu throughout the course of the day, arriving finally at Kanazawa city sometime in the afternoon. Unpack bicycle, affic baggage, look for shelter.

Explore Kanazawa and its surroundings by bike, two-three days.

Depart Kanazawa and head northwards, looping around the coastal highway that defines the edge of the idyllic Noto Han peninsula -- threeish days, all by bike. Sleeping in a tent.

Arrive back in OOOOOsaka on Saturday night in time to catch the return ferry, thus arriving back in Imabari in time to shower, straighten up, and meet a girl to watch the fireworks with on Sunday night, the 6th. I'ma see me some country.

And I'm off!

Happy (dead) Feet

Since my school kids are on summer vacation I am working at the town office, doing, as you may well be able to imagine, doing about as little as I can possibly get away with. Every day it seems I uncover new thresholds of acceptable non-work participation. Today I got to spend about three assorted hours practicing this year's dance of the dead, the bon odori for the upcoming festival, O-Bon. O-Bon is Japan's incarnation of Mexico's far more excitingly baccanalian Day of the Dead, and the bon odori means something like "the festival honoring our dead ancestors synchronized line dance." As was the case last year, I'm a member of the town office's dance team, which is exactly as lame as it is hilarious (in keeping with cultural tradition?). Aslo I may be in the captain's chair this year, or as I will refer to it, the Death Chair. I wonder if I can convince everyone to make Mexicish dia de los muertos masks for our team. Maybe I can force my students to make them for us--since, of course, summer vacation in Japan means they only have to be in school for half the day. If they're lucky.

These pictures are from O-Bon last year.
See, how cool would these suits be with big, paper-mache Mexican skull masks? The photo on the left here is the office team dancing the bon odori during the festival, while above you can see me expertly modeling a move from the dance some time earlier that day. Last year's dance had some great, "spin around and swing your arms about" business, and a really great Temptations shuffle in the middle of it (the shuffle was my favorite part). Had we worn sequined purple suits it would have fit right into the groove with that funky Temptations shuffle. Purple sequins, big paper-mache skull masks, honoring our dead ancestors...I'm sure it it all fits together somehow.

I love summer

Can't you see on their faces how much it's obvious to them that I completely love them?

I've decided that the big hinderance to more frequent blogging is the nagging feeling that I need to maintain a continuity (thank you, years of faithful X-men reading). And I'm going to say the hell with it and just update things that have been happening to me. If I get good and smooth at this, then we can retry continuity. But for now, let me tell you (in super brief) about tonight--

Tonight I had my second ukulele performance, which went a brajillion times better than the first one for a number of reasons, and I've just come home good and happy and enormously full of lovely fish and soup and other tasty things from our celebratory after-concert dinner, and I'm feeling pretty loved and included in the place that I live, and happy about being here. And let me tell you, it has been a WHILE since I've been feeling that way. God bless the summer. This is so the best time of year. Hot as it is--ungodly hot as it is--bless the summer.

Tonight our band, which I have found out is called the New Aloha Echoes, which is the dumbest name in the world, played a big shipping company's summer party and then feasted on food and drink and glory for the rest of the evening. It was awesome. It went much better than the first time, which went absolutely terribly in almost every way, and although I still kind of sucked, I had a lot of fun and it felt pretty good. The real ukulele player Iwa-san refused to say that it was even a smidgen better than the last time, but the bassist Tsuki-chan said that I was relaxed and positive and that those were fine reasons to not have been playing exactly in time with the rest of the group, and that it was a sign of improvement. I tried to remind Iwa-san that I've had a two-month hiatus from playing while my body recovers from its painful dislocated collarbone (no, not from the bike accident, I was fine from that), and that my first time back from this long hiatus was on TUESDAY of THIS WEEK (that's four nights before our concert) and that it should be considered a miracle that I was even able to hold the ukulele aloft for an hour let alone play it. This conversation ended with a lot of hitting me on the top of the head, but we were all in good spirits: I played the ukulele at a company picnic in Japan with a Hawaiian group (and hula dancers!).

And afterwards we went out for a big fancy (super fancy) dinner and I had just a great time with everybody. The band leader Ya-chin is super sweet. He really likes me a lot, and seems to take care of me in very subtle and bizarre but somehow tender ways. Tonight we were joined for the dinner by the leaders of a Hawaiian group from Okayama ken and Ya-chin was just so super sweet, being really helpful in conversations when I didn't understand things, or leaving room for me to stutter out things when I thought I understood what people were talking about...it's hard to get across exactly, but he's really sweet and caring towards me.

And speaking of sweet and caring, my Japanese papa Murakami san is taking me for za-zen (zen meditation) in the morning, and I've got to be bright and chipper for it, so I'm going to bed.

NIGHT!