A poster promoting a month-long campaign to help elderly job seekers find employment, on my morning train today.
This tank was outside a home in Yokohama. If this were America, I'd be worried about some punk smashing the glass. Each of these beautiful creatures is at least the size of my fist.
This is a shot from an earlier excursion to Kappa Sushi with my friends (from left) Henrik, Michael, and Mo.
At Shin-Kawasaki station- as usual, a whole multitude of bikes parked directly in front of a series of signs with cryptic messages including "Warning: No Parking Of Bicycles Etc In This Area" "Leaving Your Bicycles Here Causes Annoyance and Danger For Others," "Bicycles Left Here Will Be Removed."
So, for the past four days I've been wondering whether my good friend Ivan is alive. For those of you who don't know Ivan, he was my roommate in freshman year at university, and continues to be a stalwart friend of mine.
Recently, in a fit of boredom, I jokingly invited him to hop a ride on a freighter (he lives in Maryland) and come visit me in Tokyo. I received the following reply (here lightly edited):
"hahaha you are hilarious jackie boy. im down to try. I'm gonna try and stowaway on a freight liner tonight, one leaves baltimore at 12:47am, and I think that will give me time to make it after partying. I'm either dead, or I made it and im on my way if you don't hear from me by tomorrow."
Now, I can't say anything about this letter surprised me particularly, knowing Ivan. But knowing Ivan, I couldn't entirely disregard the possibility that he would actually find a way to do it. I sent a reply, and proceeded to wait. One day, two days, three days, with no response. No sign of activity on his Facebook page. Was he on the open sea? Was he dead? I couldn't be sure. If he had somehow managed to stowaway in a shipping container, did he do so in an altered state of mind, forgetting to bring provisions? I began to wonder where he'd sleep in Japan, if I'd have to find a way to smuggle him up to my room so he could have a place to crash at night- and how the hell in all this would he avoid getting arrested?
Anyway, these questions had been drifting around in my mind for the last several days. It's not that I thought there was a significant chance he'd be dumb enough to try boarding a shipping liner, but as a purely hypothetical scenario I have to admit it was exciting. I like to think that there are people out there who have the ability to cross (national, practical, legal) boundaries with such joyous, flippant immunity.
It turns out he neither died nor boarded that freight liner, but the possibility was there, so I'm not even all that pissed that he made me worry for nothing.
These photos have been on and off my mind for a while, and I think they suit the feeling of the preceding paragraphs: http://v1kram.posterous.com/liu-bolinthe-invisible-man
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On to a more concrete breakdown of recent news:
I attended my first meeting of the mandolin club. Good god! Nothing I've done so far with the instrument has really prepared me to play in the orchestra with these people.
First, the mandolins used by the club are round-back mandolins, not the flat-back kind I'm used to. The different shape of the instrument means that the strings are lower and farther from my chest than I'm used to, so I constantly found my right hand drifting towards disaster.
Not that I really could even play along with the orchestra. All of the songs in my personal books are relatively simple pieces designed for solo performance, written in both standard notation and tablature. So, of course, I found myself reading from the tablature most of the time, and even then the music never required me to leave first position for more than a note or two.
Enter "Dance of the Hours" by Ponchielli, with complex harmonies and runs of notes in the hazy upper stratosphere of treble clef, with jumps often passing the fifteenth fret on the highest (e) string, dramatic key changes, and a very swift tempo.
Naively, before practice started, I told the club director I wanted to try playing with the first mandolins (thus carrying the melody). I wanted to get away from the "supporting" role I had always played as a violist in high school. Of course, the first part is higher, faster, and more challenging than the second part, and had I understood the general difficulty level at all I wouldn't have made the decision I made.
Well now I'm stuck with it, so I'll be damned if I can't practice my way out. Unfortunately, that leaves me with about a week to achieve the same level of proficiency with a mandolin that it took me two years to get with a viola. I'll let you know how this madness plays out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also, had a great evening with Maya last night! My love made the epic hour-long train journey to my little corner of Kawasaki, where we met up, boarded the Tsuru #4 bus for Yokohama, and journeyed to Big Rock climbing gym in Shishigaya, Tsurumi Ward for a lesson in lead climbing!
Naturally, the instructor could only speak Japanese (aside from some words such as "NICE!" and climbing terminology borrowed from English), but we were able to understand pretty much everything and even learned some new words. I give credit for this to our teacher (I'm pretty sure his name is Ogawa) for patiently and clearly explaining everything. It also helped that we had him to ourselves, since it seems no one else signed up for the time slot we were in. And now we know how to climb lead, at last!
I learned something exciting from Ogawa: apparently Dai Koyamada (who became one of my climbing idols after I watched him climb Action Directe online) trains pretty regularly at the local bouldering gym! Perhaps if I climb there more regularly, I'll be able to meet him :O
After climbing came a return bus ride and a long walk from my dorm to a giant kaiten-zushi place called Kappa Sushi. I think Maya wanted sushi so badly at this point that she would have destroyed anything in her path to get it.
The restaurant is really neat- in addition to the standard snaking conveyor belt with its eternal parade of pre-made sushi creations (most plates for only 105 yen!), you can make special orders for things you want made fresh. Orders are placed on a touch-screen panel, and when they're ready they come zooming out to you straight from the kitchen on a platter shaped like a bullet train.
Now, time to practice mandolin until I have bloody fingertips! :D
No comments:
Post a Comment