Yingdi in Kujukuri

June 21st - amigasa

- album updated

Up until yesterday, there was a bruise on my left arm just above the wrist. For the past week, I've watched it change color from red to purple to yellow and finally disappear altogether. The bruise was the size of a thumb, one that, along with four other digits, were clenched around my forearm for over an hour. The thumb in question belongs to a student, one that I wrote about a short while ago.

In their second year of junior high, students have shizen kyoshitsu -- nature school -- where they do nature stuff: build fires, find pinecones, climb mountains. For Kujukuri, this is held in Kiyosato, a small town in Yamanashi, and the peak to be climbed is Mt. Amigasa which stands at over 8,000 feet. It's quite a departure for most of the kids who've lived their entire lives by the ocean. I think the tallest mountain in Chiba is Big Thunder Mountain in Tokyo Disneyland.

I was allowed to move freely between the classes as we climbed so I'd fall back to talk to the kids one minute and the next I'd dart ahead, bounding up rocks with my long gaijin legs so I could turn around take shots like the one on the left. The boys bolted ahead because they were dudes so I was surrounded by the girls the entire way up, which was fine by me. The girls actually talk to you.

And they share their candy.

Our ascent took a little over three hours and by the time we reached the summit, everyone was pretty wrecked. Then, disaster! One of homeroom teachers fell sick halfway up and I was to take his class back down in his place.

The trail down was unexpectedly difficult since there was still snow on that side of the mountain and, consequently, slush and mud. Again, the boys sprinted ahead and I had a lot of fun watching them slip and fall on their asses. I started down the trail myself and, soon after, I felt a hand close around my forearm.

I turned around to see Maya looking at me, her her big, round eyes showing a timid sort of determination to not let go. I didn't mind. It was nice, in fact.

That is until she started losing her balance. Instead of using her arms to steady herself on the slippery trail, she clung to me and almost sent us both into the mud several times. Soon, the path opened up to slope of large rocks. I explained to her that the rocks were too big to climb down unless you used both hands and she reluctantly let go. I promptly started to bound down, jumping gaps and landing on outcroppings in very Spiderman-esque poses. I was well on my way down when I heard "IENDI!!!" and turn around to see Maya at the exact spot where I'd left her. So I started making my (slow) way back up the rocks.

I didn't feel like Spiderman anymore.

I managed my way up to the rock directly below her and as I did, she did something that completely blew my mind. She held her arms out in front of her, and waited for me to pick her up. Her clique had already gone ahead and abandoned her (girls suck, I swear) and she was visibly panicked. Yet even as we stood there, other students were going around us, finding more accessible ways down. I pointed these out to her, even suggesting where to step and which rocks to go down (all in my gorgeous mountaineering Japanese); she gave them a quick glance and then resumed staring at me.

I raised my arms up to her and, when she had lowered herself into them, the force that she clung to me almost knocked me back. Her arms went around my neck and one leg wrapped around my own as her face dug into my shoulder. Her other one was stabbing out blindly for purchase on the rock I was standing on. I lowered her so she could stand and thought that we (or rather her mother and I) use the same detergent. This process repeated several times. Some of the boys around us shouted, "Iendi, moe!" I'll talk about moe later as it deserves its own entry.

Or, better yet, just wiki it.

The rocks eventually got small enough so that Maya could step down them by herself but still she gripped my forearm, her thumb digging in just above the wrist. By the time we got to the base of the slope, she had calmed down quite a bit and, judging from the picture, was having a good time.

June 10th - the most charming bathroom

- album updated

Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. Like calligraphy and tea ceremonies, it is one of the traditional art forms of Japan. It was developed centuries ago at temple called Rokkakudo which is now tucked away along a narrow street in the heart of downtown Kyoto. On the same street as Rokkakudo, past an ikebana tool store and an antique bicycle shop, is the Kazuki. The Kazuki is a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn, that our school's third year students stay at while on their annual school trip to the old capital.

The room that the male teachers always stay in is the Sakuragawa (cherry blossom river). There is a massage chair in the room that I enjoy using every time I stay there and there are dango and yatsuhashi arranged on the dining table in case you're hungry. In the Sakuragawa's bathroom, across from the toilet, is a shelf with a telephone and a vase holding a single flower. I could write paragraphs about the toilet but will suffice to mention that it has a remote control and somehow knows why you came and raises or lowers its seat accordingly. This shelf across this wonderful toilet is suspended over the floor by a horizontal strip of metal no thicker than a stick of gum that, at first glance, seems impossible to hold the weight it's bearing. I noticed this one morning and, curiousity piqued, walked around to the side of the shelf after finishing my transaction.

Underneath the metal strip, perpendicular to it, was another metal strip, bracing it.

When you're sitting on the toilet, this second strip is perfectly hidden by the first one, the one that's meant to be seen and perhaps pondered over. The Kazuki (flower moon) is full of these touches. In ikebana, the form and balance created by the flowers' placement take precedence over the beauty of the blossoms themselves. Yes, I just drew an analogy between a traditional Japanese art form over five centuries old and the telephone stand across from a toilet.

May 14th, 2006 - we had steak and lobster

- album updated

A lot of things went through my mind as I was jumping into the base of this waterfall. I was thinking that wetsuits are pretty amazing -- the water I had been trudging through all morning was freezing yet I was relatively comfortable. I was thinking that Minakami, Gunma -- where I went white water rafting and canyoning for the weekend -- was a nice little mountain town if not still a bit chilly for early May. I was thinking the dinner at the pension I stayed at the night before was one of the best meals in my life. What I wasn't thinking about was the cameraman that was perched above the canyon we were trekking through taking pictures of our journey. Had I been, I might not have taken this jump flailing like a jackass.

May 7th, 2006 - fun with photoshop

- gallery updated

Adobe Photoshop has been on my computer since freshman year of college. For me, Photoshop has always been the software equivalent of a set of encyclopedias on the bookshelf in your den. You never use it, but it makes you feel more erudite just having it around. You have a wealth of information that spans just about everything you'd care to know about. You could get up (perhaps while wearing a smoking jacket), walk over, and look up the chief export of Bolivia or what occurs during nuclear fission. If you felt like it.

I have a student, Maya, whom I coached in an English speech contest a while back. As I was walking up and down the aisles in class one day, I saw that she had Kingdom Hearts II written in marker on the back of her hand. Kingdom Hearts II is an action/RPG made by Square and Disney. For those of you that would dismiss such an amalgam, please know that James Earl Jones is in the credits and who the hell is you to scoff at Mufasa? Having played the first Kingdom Hearts in college (instead of studying), I talked to her about it after class (instead of working).

The next day she ran up to me in the halls with the game in her hands saying that she wanted to lend it to me. Not wanting to disappoint her, I borrowed the game already knowing that it won't run on my American PS2. So I sat there that weekend brooding as the game sat on my dresser mocking me. I was pensively thumbing the instruction manual when it came to me to draw a picture of Sora, the game's main character, for Maya in thanks of her generousity.

After I finished inking the picture (left), I scanned it for my portfolio, and then gave it to Maya. I had original intended to clean it up and upload it here, but smoothing out the lines made me realize what a crappy job I did. Maya had lent me her favorite game and what I gave her in return was this drawing with the lines all chunky.

It wasn't even colored.

I found a digital painting tutorial online and went about learning Photoshop as I colored the image. Cleaning up the lines was by far the most time consuming step while adding the base colors took no time at all. I started using (very conservatively) gradients, blurs and highlights in the fourth image. By the fifth image, I had handle on shading and highlights and I added some secondary lighting and changed the background color for the final step.

The completed image is available here. The entire process took over two weeks. I think it came out pretty well for my first attempt, but there's still a lot of stuff I want to learn. I printed out a copy for Maya and she was ecstatic. After several years of sitting in my computer, it finally took a student to get me to sit down and learn Adobe Photoshop.

There's a moral in there somewhere.