April 2004

April 28, 2004

Place: Grazie's restaurant, Yonge and Eglinton, Toronto.

The constant rush of conversation - some of it comprehensible with concentration, much of it blending into a pleasant auditory melange, and gurgling flow that fills the ears without overwhelming them. The clink of glasses, the drop of a fork.

Suddenly quiet, then a roar. The local hockey team has scored, and for a moment all conversations are momentarily halted for all to unite in a cheer. Quick checks to see who scored: how much time is left? Friends remembered, talking picking up where it left.

Laura and I.

We hadn't come for the conversation. Tonight was about the food.

It's funny how being homeless can keep you from feeling like you're home; how being surrounded by the vaguely familiar can stop you from feeling wrapped in familiarity. But this was Grazie's.

Think of your very favourite meal, in your very favourite restaurant. Now imagine having it again for the first time.

"This is my first Caesar in a year." I told the waiter, after he explained to me his own personal love for the drink.

Goat's cheese. Artichoke hearts.

"These cost 10 US dollars for a small jar in Japan." I told him.

Grazie's is where Laura and I would go every time we felt like we needed a time out. The place was as much a home to us as the place where we paid rent, and truth be told, our wages were probably almost evenly split between our landlord and the restaurant.

Fresh pasta, a carafe of house wine. Specialty coffees.

We didn't have a meal tonight; we had a long reminder of what the word home means.

April 26, 2004

Finally back in Toronto...though access to the internet has become sporadic since becoming homeless, access to pizza has become much more reliable.

Seriously, I haven't found a way to reliably gather my email just yet, so please don't feel slighted if I haven't gotten back to you just yet.

Laura and I are settling in fairly well, and the jetlag (so far) hasn't been too bad. Culture shock hasn't quite been as strong as the last time we visited, but we have found ourselves sensitive to some things here that we've never noticed before.

One major thing that I've noted is the way that people interact. Despite our reputation as a rather calm people, Canadians seem far more prone to bickering and confrontation than our friends across the Pacific. Take as a case in point my visit to Tim Horton's yesterday to get some soup and a sandwich. After successfully completing an unduly long and complicated ordering process, Laura and I were treated to a display of complete pandemonium behind the counter.

The cashier asked us to move down the counter to get our order, and after moving down a little we were met by one employee with our drinks.
"Get your food just over there" he said, indicating further down the counter.

When we got further down, only my food was waiting.
"Um, we need another soup and sandwich." I said to the guy at the sandwich counter.
"Yeah, they ordered another sandwich!" the cashier snapped at the sandwich guy.
"What are you talking about?!" he growled back at her.
"Ugh! Can't you read the screen?" the drive through girl sighed at the sandwich guy as she came over to join the fray.
"What the hell? Where does it say another sandwich?!" the sandwich guy threw his hands up in the air.
"Right there!" the cashier had come over, and was pointing accusingly at the screen that showed the order.
"I don't know what you guys are talking about. You do it." the sandwich guy backed away from the counter, his hands still thrown up in resignation.

Laura and I stood there through all of this in dumbstruck fascination as the argument heated up and all of the staff became more upset with eachother, until realizing at long last that the cashier had screwed up. Seeing open conflict like that was definitely not something that we were used to seeing in Japan, and we found ourselves standing and laughing at the situation which now seemed so alien to us.

One thing that absolutely did my head in Saturday was a visit to a Toronto supermarket.

The fruit and vegetable section in this grocery store - besides being superbly stocked with every kind of produce imaginable - was bigger than the whole supermarket that I used to shop at in Kyoto. And that was just the vegetable section! I found myself walking up and down the isles as if I was drunk, smiling stupidly and laughing to myself, mumbling about how incredible it all was. It then took me about five minutes to locate where they kept the water, but it was a happy five minutes spent walking along isles packed with foods that just a week ago I would have happily severed my right arm just to get my hands on.

April 23, 2004...part 2

It's not so often that you get to live the same day twice, but with the time difference we're actually landing in Toronto only two hours after leaving Osaka.

So that makes it official; we have now left Japan...and with only minimal difficulty. Our bags were pretty seriously overweight (one of them by 8 kilos) and in order to avoid a $400USD charge that they were going to slap on us, we had to do some major rearranging of our luggage right at the check-in counter. It's funny when you're forced to rip apart a bag in a few minutes when it had been carefully packed over the course of hours.

Also, in the age of heightened airport security, it doesn't help very much if you happen to be travelling with three laptops. Not to be outdone, Laura tried to one-up me at the security desk and was found to have three pairs of scissors in her carry on...altogether, we were a pretty popular couple in the security area.

Our first stop here in Canada was a Pizza Hut, where we gorged ourselves and got a PITCHER of beer (imagine that, it comes in pitchers!).

April 23, 2004

Today is the day...Laura and I are flying out at 5:00 pm. I can't quite believe that today has actually come, but considering that my liver is now virtually swimming in alcohol from all the goodbye parties, it's probably a good thing.

I would just like to say thanks to all the wonderful people that I've met here in Japan who have made my time so enjoyable. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

April 20, 2004

Yesterday was my last class at my Aikido class at the Budo Center, and it feels strange to all of a sudden not know when my next class will be. It is also the end of me being uke for Nomura Shihan, which was an excellent experience, and a chance that I am glad to have had. I am immensely grateful to everyone at the Budo Center for all that I have learned, and for the encouragement that they gave me.

Today was also my last class at Yoko Okamoto's dojo, and I'm thankful to everyone there, too, for all the good practices I had there.

On top of all that, yesterday was my last time to visit my Zen teacher, Yoshitomi-san, at Nanzen-ji. We had our last session together on Sunday, and then he showed Laura and I around the Temple one last time on Monday. I am immensely grateful for all of Yoshitomi-san's care in introducing me to Zen practice, and I will never forget my experiences at Nanzen-ji and Kouun-ji. At Yoshitomi-san's request, I also wrote a small essay about my experience studying Zen, which I ended up calling the Lonely Cushion. It's a pretty inadequate essay considering all that I have experienced through Zen, but it is the first time I have really been able to write something on the topic.

April 16, 2004

For anyone who has tried to contact Laura in the last week, please try again! Her email is back, but in a horrible twist of fate all of the messages that were sitting in her mailbox were deleted before she got the chance to read them.

In other news, I recently got one of my photographs published in a German trade magazine, and I've got a few more in the works at the moment. I'm also going to be bringing in my film today from the tea ceremony, and I'm hoping that some good shots will come out of that.

As of today, Laura and I have exactly one more week left in Japan...and almost every single day is booked solid until we leave. Only seven more sleeps, seven more breakfasts with nattou and pickles, three more Aikido classes and one more zazen session left in Japan...

Also, today I'm going to check out a solution to a problem we have been considering regarding our Europe trip. As Laura's camera is digital, we've been mulling over how to empty the cards...I've looked into digital wallets and mp3 players and the like, but today we're going to check out getting a cheap, light used laptop to take with us. Apparently you can pick one up for only a couple hundred bucks, which is cheaper than buying more cards and would mean that I could keep updating the website while we're travelling.

April 13, 2004

Ahhh, email is finally back, though Laura is still stuck in the email-less dark ages, unfortunately.

Last night I got my certificates for my entry into the Aikikai, making me an official, brand-spanking-new first degree black belt in Aikido. According to my certificate, I am the 98,350th person to get their black belt in the Aikikai Federation...that's a lot of people!

The weather here in Kyoto has continued to be amazing, making for the longest stretch of gorgeous weather here in recent memory (25 degrees and sunny every day). Every time I see a tourist (and the city is inundated with them right now) all I can think is 'damn you're lucky!' If they had come even a month ago, chances are all they would have gotten was day after day of rain.

So Laura and I have started packing, and the suitcases are out. There are only 10 days before we leave Japan, and I have only 5 more Aikido classes left. Leaving is definitely a strange mix of excitement and sadness, and it seems that so much is about to change in our lives that we don't know what way is up any more. We haven't even thought about our trip to Europe yet, even though it is only about a month away....aaaaghh!

In more somber news, I heard just yesterday about the passing of Mitsunari Kanai Shihan, a renowned instructor of Aikido in America, and one of the Founder's original students. His passing leaves a huge hole in the Aikido world, but he has left behind him a great number of people who will remember him fondly.

April 11, 2004

So my email is still down, and things aren't looking so promising about getting it back up again. I'm signed up with a Canadian email provider, and it seems that they got tired of trying to fix the problem and went home for the long weekend.

Well, the weather here has continued to be spectacular, making it a little difficult to keep myself indoors and put together our Biwa page. Today we're going to experience the tea ceremony once more, which is pretty exciting.

April 10, 2004

A note to anyone trying to get in touch with Laura or myself; our email service provider is down right now, and they don't seem to know when they're going to be up again. We'll be in touch when they get their stuff together again.

April 9, 2004

Yesterday afternoon Laura and I made it back to Kyoto; three days and 250.03 kilometers later. Today, we rested (though I had an Aikido class to go to first!). Tomorrow, I'm hoping to put together a page about the trip, which was, on the whole, amazing.

April 5, 2004

Despite the fact that the forecast for today called for more of the same from yesterday, we were treated with some of the best weather I have seen yet this year. Somehow the cherry blossoms survived the deluge, and Laura and I were able to see them in all their glory as we strolled along the Path of Philosophy today.

But as much as we did today, and as amazing as it was...and no matter how much I'd like to write about it right now...alas, time is against me.

Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn, Laura and I are setting out for a bicycle trip around Lake Biwa; Japan's largest lake. The trip is probably going to total around 250km, after taking into consideration the ride from Kyoto into neighbouring Shiga Prefecture. Everything's packed, and we won't be back until later this week (so don't be angry if we don't answer your calls or don't return any emails!).

Though we've heard it's possible for experienced bikers to do the trip in one day, we're budgeting three. We want to check out the historic "Eight Views of Omi", visit some castles and do some camping.

Last night we set the tent up to test it out, checked all our gear and today took our bikes in for a tune-up. So, as of 6am tomorrow, it's on the road. Wish us luck!

April 4, 2004

A day of rain and a rare moment with nothing planned means that at long last I can try getting around to a few things that I've been meaning to get to for ages. One of those things was getting my film developed, which evidently has been building up for some time...some of the pictures are from November! It's at moments like that that I start to realize how busy I've been, when months slip by without me noticing.

About a week ago a magazine here called Keiko to Manabu came out, with a small and slightly embarrassing article in it about me and Nanzen-ji temple.

They've added speech bubbles in, with me saying insightful things like "Zen makes me to feel relaxed"...oh the bitter irony of being an English teacher in Japan, then appearing in a magazine with bad English coming out of your mouth! The other funny thing is that the other girl in the photos is someone that the magazine interviewers brought with them, because they wanted it to seem like a lot of foreigners went there...very strange indeed.

So among the photos that I got developed are some really excellent ones, and I'm hoping to put together some new pages in the weeks to come. That being said, there's a lot of packing to do and most of next week is going to be spent biking around lake Biwa...I guess there's actually not so much time really!

That's the crazy thing that's been doing my head in: Japan has been my reality for the past two years, and it's really difficult to believe that that's all going to change in three weeks. In the mean time, it seems like there is very little time to get all of the things done that I would like to...I'll try not to panic.

April 2, 2004

Wow...who knew that being unemployed could be so busy! It was pretty tough finishing up work this week, and though I'm happy to be done, it has made me realize that my time in Japan has become severely limited.

In happy news, however, Kyoto has literally erupted with colour as the thousands of cherry trees all through the city have come into full bloom.

The streets, rivers and paths of the city have suddenly been painted with colour, and the weather seems to have decided to do its part to make the last few days as amazing as possible...it is possibly the nicest couple of days I have yet seen in Kyoto.

Today we hung out in Maruyama Park - a famed spot for cherry blossoms. After an amazing sunny afternoon sitting around under the trees, we were treated to a pretty spectacular sunset...just amazing.

Yesterday we sat along the banks of the Kamo River at Laura's favourite cherry blossom spot, and while barbequeing and soaking in the scenery, we somehow managed to polish off more than three litres of wine...but then, that's what hanami is all about.

One more little piece of news...a happy birthday to Justin and Joshua, who are celebrating their collective first birthday today!