Sailing Day

We have the good fortune of  being friends with the captain of a yacht.  Last weekend, he invited us to join him and his crew, and some other landlubbers, for a little race, 'just for fun'.  It wasn't a serious race, otherwise we would have been cast overboard as jetsam.  

These islands are called "Koshima" (little island) and "Oshima" (big island).  See why?
It rained in the morning, but around noon or so, the sun peeped through the clouds and then it cleared off and became very hot.  We ended up with sunburns on our faces!  It was great to sit in the sun.  After the race the captain cooked lunch for all the crew and we ate on the boat.  
Our job was to enjoy the race and to move to one side or the other during a tack.  There were three different races, beginning about 10 minutes apart, and we won our class!  There were probably 30 boats per class, and we even passed some of the boats in the class ahead of us.  

Sailing is a sport that is really for rich people.  Since we will never be rich, we thought this was a great experience to have, especially in Japan.  After the race we both felt a bit woozy and sleepy, so we went home and I stretched out on the floor for a nap.  The floor is the best place for a nap, i must say. 

Going sailing reminded me of my fledgeling interest in surf-sailing.  I think that would be a great sport-good exercise, and great for windy days in Saskatchewan when it's too rough to go rowing.

You can enjoy.

As is the usual case on this blog, my photos are backwards and inside out.  Last weekend it rained constantly, ranging from cats and dogs to mist.  Neither was very good for being outdoors, unless it is in a giant rose garden!  

...Which is just where we went, in the afternoon on sunday, AFTER the pottery class.  

I am  holding my new charge, a tiny pine bonsai, which now sits in our already foliage-populated windowsill.  Mandy said i could get it, because she has like a million plants, and i'm allowed one now.  So i'm happy.  But i should add that i have already adopted a different, tiny broadleaf plant, and i look after it.   It is the plant that graces our toilet room.  It is quite a miracle plant, because it thrives, sitting all day and all night in a toilet room, getting just the crumbs from shadows' tables for sunlight, and the odd bit of electric light.  I do check on it daily, and water it every so often.  The only reason i can think of for its healthy condition is my fond thoughts toward it.  Do plants sense these things?  
There's a beautiful flower!  ...and the rose isn't bad either.  
Yes, here we are at the pottery class.  It was lucky for us that we have good students who don't mind driving us around in the rain the odd time, and arranging these experiences for us.  These women are mother and daughter.  I used to teach the daughter, Yuu, and Mandy teaches the mother, Atsuko.  It was funny in class, because i'd say, "how are you, Yuu?", and laugh awkwardly a little each time. 
Mandy and i made some good things, but it wasn't what we expected.  We thought it was going to be a lesson on the electric wheel, and then throwing some pots.  I think my dear wife misses her wheel-work, and i was hoping it would give her a good dose to carry her through until we got back home.  But she had to do with just a whiff of her craft, which was maybe worse than nothing.  I don't know.  But i'm pretty sure we had fun.  Mandy made a big fat mug, a candle holder, and a bowl.  I made two soba sauce bowls and a couple of tiny sake cups.  I liked the combination of hand building and the spinning table-top wheel action.  It ends up nice and round, but you also get a little roughness around the edges, and you can see that it's built by fingers.  
I drooled a little in my euphoria.

Japanese Cultural experience

Here is a great video (i think) of a Japanese Taiko drumming performance we saw on Sunday.  It was part of the fire festival i described in the last post.  Sorry i don't have time to write more now, i have to go to work!  I'm riding to work in the hot hot heat today.  It's May and already the temperature creeps towards the 30's .  I'm scared about the summer.  Enjoy the video!

Goin' to the old Fire Festival

On Sunday we went to Gamagori, about an hour by car/train, to a festival!  There are festivals all summer, in different places.  This one is called Gamagori Tezutsu Hanabi Matsuri, which means, "Gamagori Hand-held Fireworks Festival".  There was nice festival foods: yaki-soba, curry rice, chicken on a stick, and ice cream!  Then, when it became dark, they began the fireworks.  These are not the shoot-them-off-into-the-sky kind of fireworks.  As you can see from the video (yay, i got a video to work!) they hold onto these bamboo cannons wrapped in rope, which are presumably packed with gunpowder or something, and they hold onto them until they finally pop and go out.  It seems dangerous to the ears especially, but i also marveled at how their hair didn't catch fire.  

A bit more of Hokkaido

We took a boat ride out toward Russia a little way, and the seagulls chased us closely.  It reminded me of "All the Diamonds" by Bruce Cockburn.  I sang it to myself on the boat.  

Hokkaido is a very different Japan than where we currently live.  There is a lot of space, wilderness, varied geography, and not many people.  The villages and towns are generally quiet and peaceful.  From our reactions, i think we're country folk after all.  
We were closer to Russia than to Tokyo, and i found it interesting that the signs were sometimes in Cyrillic and English letters.  There is tension between Russia and Japan over 4 little rocky outcrops in the ocean somewhere.  Big island dispute.  
We visited a botanical garden in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido.  Remember "Sapporo Ichiban" noodles?  Well, this is the home of those.  They cheapened ramen noodles and sold them to the world, and there were many imitators.   

The above photo is taken at the "Canadian Rock Garden".  Doesn't it look like everybody's back yard in Canada?  There were lots of rocks and scrub trees and pines.  I'm not sure how representative of Canadian flora this selection is, but i didn't really feel at home.  ...well, a little.  I thought that maybe a giant, freshly planted cutblock would make me feel more at home.
Hokkaido is famous for its flowers and red fields and lavender and such.  We were a couple months too early to catch the majority of the flowers, but we did manage to see a beautiful magnolia tree in bloom.  It was breathtaking!  You can't really tell by the photos, but it was quite amazing to see these giant, stark blooms all reaching for the sun.  
Here's something i never thought i would lay eyes on.  Actually, i never knew they existed.  They're not in my version of the Bible, anyway.  But there they are, plain as day.  

The Ainu people hold a place in Japanese society similar to that held by the Indigenous people of Canada.  They have been oppressed by the general population, and now marketed as a kind of novelty.  There are Ainu villages, restored to look original, and 'God's Chopsticks' were in an Ainu museum that we visited in the botanical garden.  

Please remember my family these days, we are mourning the loss of my Uncle Mel.  We are mourning from afar, and the rest of my family are up close.  

Joy and Sadness

Today is Wednesday, May 6th, and it was our first day back at work after the second major Japanese holiday we've had since we moved here.  We decided to go northward to the island of Hokkaido (which the guidebooks say that many Japanese people regard as the best destination, and the best bit of nature in the country).  It's 1/5th the size of Japan, but only 5% of the Japanese population lives there.  The areas we visited involved ocean views, seagulls, steam-venting, snow-covered mountains, sun-baked forest roads, and broad, rolling fields.  The first photo here was taken at the end of Tenninkyo gorge, which took us about 20 minutes to hike through along a rushing river from the small cluster of hotels.  There's a beautiful set of waterfalls at the end.  We saw a few people, but not many.  It's still early in the season for crowd problems, and we were very thankful for our timing on this trip.  We never waited in line for anything!
One of the great joys of traveling is, once in a while, to risk putting yourself into the hands of chance and opportunity.  We got a bus ride to Tenninkyo Onsen, where the waterfall was, and i had planned a forest walk up about 4 miles to the next town.  The guidebook said it's a nice walk.  

Well, it turned out that the trail was still under many feet of snow, and would be impossible to hike it at this time of year.  So what could we do but walk on the highway to the next town?  If Mandy's shoes were in a lineup of random shoes, and we asked anyone to pick out the least likely to be used on an extensive walk in the mountains, anyone would have picked the queen's lace slippers first, but next, they would have picked Mandy's tiny shoes.  But she was up for the walk, and we felt good.  It was a beautiful day, and we set out, thinking it would be one or two hours.  See, we HAD to get to that next town by a certain time to catch the bus back to the town where our hotel was.  

Long story short, we walked 10 kilometres, and realizing that we wouldn't make it to the town in time if we walked all the way, we finally started to stick our thumbs out to the sparse passing cars, and within a few minutes, we had a ride with a nice Japanese couple in a Land Cruiser.  
The successful hitch allowed us time for a cable car ride up the volcano to the snowy regions, where there were steam vents coming out of the rock.  Again, Mandy's hiking shoes came through for her in style.
Hokkaido has varied terrain, like Canada.  We explored an agricultural region by mountain bike.  The fields here reminded me of Italy, rolling over hills topped with big farm houses... it was beautiful.  
On the morning of our last day in Hokkaido, we received news that my dear Uncle Mel had suddenly died.  It created a whirlwind of happiness and sadness for me, and i still feel that mixture, unable to fully let the reality sink in.  I have been thinking a lot about him with sadness and joy since i heard.  I really liked him a lot.  Still do, actually.  It's been good to reflect on my memories of him, and it makes me happy to see him laughing in almost every one.  He is a joyful, permanent fixture in my memories since i was old enough to have memories.  Despite our infrequent visits, i will miss him a lot.  My thoughts and prayers are with my Dad and all the Peters family.  

This giant poplar is one of the 'famous' trees of the Biei region in Hokkaido.  It has grown at an angle, evoking the image of someone deep in thought, and so they call it the "philosopher's tree".  It is beautiful, even without its leaves.