...does not concern us.

As I posted a long, long time ago to show photos of my first, hideously expensive apartment here in Japan, I figure it's likely about time that I post some photos of my current, far newer, far cheaper, far cleaner and warmer and nicer apartment. It's a great place, and I'm really fortunate to have it for as cheap as I do. My only wish is that I hadn't been burning money on that other monstrous place for a full year of my time here >:(

Asano and the Arab Spring

Asano-Sensei, my Japanese Mum, charts the progress of the Arab Spring across her laminated map of the world with post-it notes. And in this country where it is sometimes a little too easy to over generalize how internationally ignorant the Japanese can be, my Japanese Mum does a better job of understanding this revolution than me. I try to put into words how it makes me feel as she explains the kanji on the post-its: that this one on Tunisia says that here is where it all started; that this one on Egypt says that here is where the people achieved their independence; that these ones on Syria and Libya say that the people are still fighting. I tell her that I’m proud of her, but that doesn’t quite manage to capture the half of it. I should be telling her that I feel guilty that, even in all my news watching, I haven’t been anywhere near as geographically diligent as she has. I should be telling her that she has likely paid closer attention to all of this than a whole pile of foreigners out there who fancy themselves internationally-minded.

This is Kamakura

Part two of the Great Tokyo Tour To Heather's Former Haunts!

Kamakura and Kita Kamakura make up a collection of shrines and temples a short train ride out of Tokyo. When she lived in Tokyo three years ago, Heather used to come out to Kamakura all the time. She thought I'd like the place, and with the combination of old-school Japanese architecture and TREES, she was absolutely right.

This is Yokohama

Heather and I headed to Tokyo for Golden Week 2011 (from April 29th to May 5th), but I'm only getting around to posting the first batch of photos from the trip now. As I've, apparently, swung my fickle/obsessive interest set out of writing and into photography, let's call this a Photo Essay of the Yokohama leg of our trip...

A Goodbye to Winter

This past weekend Heather and I headed to Niseko for our last runs of this season, and likely the last runs in Hokkaido for a little while. The island was clearly as sad as I was about the end to the long, glorious, deeply snowy winter as it was raining, off-and-on, pretty much all day.

The Art of Destruction

Though I think it's an aspect that Heather finds unsettling, I can often find there to be something awe-inspiring in catastrophe, in horror. Maybe that's the same side of me that often thinks the most interesting stories--the most moving and affecting--are the darkest ones. Whatever it is, it manifests when I try to put myself in the shoes of someone watching Hitler's rise to power, try to imagine what it would be like to have the realization dawn on you that a man you thought to be a charismatic dictator was actually a genocidal maniac.

I try to imagine what fits of imagination were required to assimilate the scale of destruction wrought by the atom bomb when nothing like it had ever been seen before--I try to imagine that watershed moment when the realization sinks in and your view of the world is upended by a weaponized piece of science fiction. I try to flesh that out to wonder what weapons we could never imagine are currently out there in development; I try to imagine what it will be like when they are released and we have to reformat our worlds to make them make sense.

At the Top of Hokkaido

Mark, Lindsay, Max, and I spent this past weekend at the top of Hokkaido, snowboarding (and skiing, I guess, as Max was there) on Asahidake, the tallest mountain in Hokkaido.

Ananthema

At the entrance ceremony today, the new elementary 1st graders are sandwiched between their new peers to the back and The Stage with The Flag to the front. They are drowned in the dreary droning of the haunting melody and words of the antiquated, imperialistic, controversial Japanese Anthem. It is a dirge that has always given me the eerie impression that it lingers in time: never starting or stopping, just existing. It fades in, gradually building to a see-sawing, moaning climax, before fading--or flowing--away, back to that place of shadow and light where it waits in time.

Don't get me wrong; there's beauty in it. It's just a beauty that harrows more than it inspires. I am relieved when it fades out, and the lost-looking new 1年生 are fished out of the dark by the nothing-but-sunshine-and rainbows Furubira Elementary school song: a song I'm so in love with that I not only want to learn it before I leave, but I kind of want to ask if I can sing it with the school--if I can bathe in their sometimes-screamy, midget-melodious light.