The Glory of Shinkansen (and a HUGE breakfast)

Everyday on tour is long if you count the distance.  Today started in Tokyo and I'm now over 500 kilometers away in Morioka in northern Japan.  A colossal breakfast and a shinkansen powered me to get here.

Breakfast at the hotel;
the entire space behind that wall is a huge Vegas-like buffet with everything from pastries to eggs, salad, cereal, seaweed, soup and rice.  It's all there in the Japanese breakfast buffet.

Before boarding the shinkansen, I've always noticed the precision of the workers that clean the trains while we wait.  Today, one of the Japanese members of the orchestra made of point of telling us about the phenomenon of the Japanese shinkansen cleaners.  One person completes the task of cleaning a train car in 7 minutes.  It's an amazing feat to watch and afterwards they come off the train and bow to all the passengers waiting to board.

The shinkansen that we took from Tokyo had an additional surprise.  I've always been a fan of the Sky Mall but this was the first time that I encountered...

Yes, it's as good as it promises to be

Here are a few of my favorite pages....

yes, you can buy all the fish your heart desires

for those that can't get enough shinkansen paraphernalia:
cakes, socks, cups, a computer mouse, calendar......

staying warm in style

I welcome theories about what is happening in the lower left corner

Beginning of HPAC Tour

We have made it to Tokyo, me and my clothes.  I've taken the opportunity to shamelessly hang a camera around my neck and see Japan through new eyes.  Everything is amazing again, the vending machines, the fake food displays, the crowds of Japanese people in the train station.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a problem with my computer reading my camera's SD card.  Perhaps it will get resolved but it may have to wait until the end of the tour before I can put up all the pictures I've taken.  Pictures of seats with no one to sit in them on the bullet train, of a hotel room no wider than 7 feet across, of glowing bridges in a hazy Tokyo night, of my friends trying to climb fences and sit on one another's shoulders to get pictures of said bridge.  So until then, just snapshots from my camera will have to do.  I'll try to take more with it knowing that this problem exists....

pile of suitcases gathering at HPAC,
 clothes ready to go somewhere

Drying Clothes in Typhoon Weather (Day Before HPAC Tour)

The typhoon cannot be beaten, I know it must have its rain.  Oh my clothes, my clothes.  If only the air could more quickly relieve you of your heavy watery burden.  But already it carries so much.

Tomorrow the shinkansen will take me away and you must be dry to come along.  We go on a tour of Japan, from top to bottom, it seems.  Nine nights I will not be in my bed and you will be lonely if you must hang in such an empty room.

How many open views from traveling windows will go by without you?  How many new halls, new faces, new hotel rooms will you never see?  How many subway melodies and hotel hallway songs will you never hear?  What will be without you?

You might never know, and be no less happy for it.  But I certainly want you there.  That it may be in your fiber for years to come.  And that I may be clothed and decent.

Transitive and Intransitive

Transitive and intransitive verbs.  A person does something and something is done.  I open the door.  The door opens.  In Japanese there are two different words for these things.  I akimasu a door.  But on its own, the door will akemasu.  If she is sleeping but it is time to get up, I okoshimasu the child.  But on her own, the child will okimas.  The words are similar and there are trends to their differences, but no hard-fast rule.  This goes along with the bouncing game of particles that accompany the nouns doing or being done to which change depending on whether it's transitive or intransitive (and I've just learned, also change in a different way whether a person has performed the action or it was just the result of...nature?)  Anyway, the point is, it can be a bit muzukashi ("difficult," as anything is called when it is not immediately mastered here.  It's not your fault.  Just say it's hard).

Fukunari-sensei is leading me through this treacherous strait with great care.  Many examples must be employed, many confirmations of my understanding made.  In one exercise prompted through the text book, there is an earthquake and a picture of the aftermath.  Things have fallen, are broken, are dirty, etc.  The kettle on the range is still boiling.

It was this last point that brought Fukunari-sensei out of the intransitive verbs.  The gas is on.  Still in intransitive land.  Please turn it off.  To transitive we turn.  There are many earthquakes in Japan, she explained.  And when an earthquake happens there are things you should do: open the window, open the door, turn off the gas, get under something.

As she told me this it struck me that she had been through this before.  It is an experience that colors her existence in a way I cannot possibly understand.  I've never experienced an earthquake (of which I was aware) nor any other life-threatening natural disaster.  As she spoke, using this example to explain verbs, I felt very innocent and respectful of her experience as a Japanese person living in the midst of this unpredictable phenomenon.  She was here during the Great Hanshin Earthquake.  She lived through it.  To me it is only a story.

I still don't know how to describe this state-of-being.  What is her state-of-being, what is mine, what is the door's?  I think it's changing.

A Breather

How many ways can the mind wear the world?

Sounds of Action, Sounds of Space

The crickets are pulsating outside my window; in the space between their sounds, my refrigerator hums.  Last night and this morning, the sound of rain accompanied my 10-hour sleep.  This afternoon, a doorbell brought me a box from America full of tea, cookies and other happy things.  Half-an-hour ago, a trumpet practiced and a cat cried outside my window.  Now they are all silent but the crickets and the cooling of my Japanese food.

Homecoming from Nagoya

Back from Nagoya and taking a breath between this warm-up excursion and our next 9-day tour of Japan.  It's always fun and tiring to go to a new place, and now we have four days to regroup before our next launch.

The time in Nagoya unfortunately did not include football or prom dresses.  This homecoming was for some of their alumni and was a big event, likely given the fact that Nagoya University is a fairly prestigious university in Japan.  Nobel Prize winners and Toyota CEOs are in their ranks.  In a used book sale that some of us traipsed into, we found many huge volumes in English on molecular biology, genetics, chemistry and the like.  Japanese-English dictionaries of technical scientific terminology, art books of Asian artifacts, and many books of mystery.

We also went out to dinner for some regional fried chicken.  I enjoyed a slightly different menu that included a regional miso sauce over eggplant.  It's one thing to count on in Japan, that there will be regional food to explore.

Nagoya University Campus
(green pastures and bikes must be a universal part of academia)

 

Nagoya Teppanyaki (fried chicken, a specialty here)

Christy and Teppanyaki

chopstick holders (or modern art?)
(fun with chopstick holder games at dinner)