January 2004

January 24, 2004

It's been an interesting week healthwise, which has ended up with me taking a sick day for the first time in over a year, sitting at home with an almost dislocated shoulder, a cut and bruised knee and a chest cold. It doesn't get any better than that!

My little accident came on Thursday, and as sudden as it was, I've been expecting it to happen ever since we got here.

You see, the funny thing is about pedestrians in Japan (or maybe it's just Kyoto people) is that they don't look where they are going. I don't mean simply that they're not really paying attention, I mean that the average person assiduously avoids looking around them - or even in front of them - while walking. For the first time visitor to Kyoto, this can be rather disconcerting, as you find yourself walking toward a crowd of people, none of whom are looking up, and are forced to navigate accordingly. I can't even count the number of times that I have almost run into people, and instead of communicating which way we should go to get around eachother, I am confronted with a person standing motionless about two feet in front of me, studying something intently on the ground.

What's worse, I have often seen people stroll out into the street without looking in either direction, with cars screeching and swerving to avoid them. This apparently suicidal behaviour is fully supported by the government, however, and the law stipulates that should a motorist hit a pedestrian - under any circumstances - the fault lies with the driver.

So here I was on Thursday, biking madly to get to the subway station on time for my train. Some highschool kids were jogging along the side of the road toward me, and to stay out of their way I was biking straight down the centre of the street.

A split second before impact I found myself thinking, "I knew this would happen eventually!", as one of the students decided to cross the street quickly while talking to his friend over his shoulder. I mean, why look where you're going when walking into traffic?

Considering that I was going at top speed at the time, I could have been hurt much worse. I sailed over my handlebars and made a not-so-graceful landing on the pavement. What added insult to injury, however, was that as I got up to ride away, one of the other students busted out his one word of broken English and called out "Soh-ree". I was not impressed.

In other news, this week Laura and I made things official, and handed in our resignations. Last day of work; March 31st. We're both fairly excited at this point, and are looking forward to doing some travelling after the wedding. Our flights out of Japan are booked for the 23rd of April, which means that we'll have some time to chill out here and enjoy the springtime in Kyoto before leaving.

January 20, 2004

The last few weeks have been pretty packed, and the weeks ahead don't look like they'll be any lighter. This seems to be the time when everyone feels the urge to move on...in a two week period we're going to be going to seven good-bye parties.

Unfortunately, included in those goodbye parties are those of our closest friends. Last week we had to say goodbye to Sarina (which hasn't really sunken in yet), and on Sunday it was Krishan and Vicki (which also hasn't sunken in). The terrible thing is that these are the people we met when we were thinking we had had enough before, and whose friendship made us change our minds about moving on. Though we're happy to see them move on to some pretty exciting plans, it's unbelievably sad to see them go. Thank you guys for your friendship, good luck, and I hope that we meet again sometime soon!

Between the rush of going back to work after New Year's and all of the various gatherings that have had me going out almost every night so far since the holidays ended, I have managed to develop an eye twitch that I know I only get when I come out somewhere on the other side of exhaustion. Though rather annoying for the first few days, I have now grown rather fond of my tick, as it reminds me that I'm working too hard and that - yes - a long break is a good idea. Every time I walk into the staff room after my weekend and my eye starts to convulse in a rapid staccato I am reminded that the raise and promotion that have been offered to me as an inducement to stay are probably not a good idea. Spending some time on the Mediterranian finishing my book, however, is a good idea.

With the New Year, also, has come the challenge of ramping up my training for my next test in Aikido. If all goes well, I'll be taking 'the big test' in March...just in time as we have now booked our flights for April. The test involves being attacked simultaneously by three people from all angles, so needless to say, I have a little practicing to do.

Sunday was my first day back at Kouun-ji for zazen in the New Year, and to mark the occasion we did an extra long sitting in which I think that I might have actually solved a koan...only I don't know if was actually formally given the koan in the first place, and even if I was, I don't know if it was translated properly...it all adds up to...what? Seeing as koan are supposed to be nonsensical anyway, does that mean that the translation isn't that important? Does it matter if it ends up garbled? If it does matter, what does it mean if you solve it? That should be a koan too, I think.

Evidently I'm going to be interviewed for some magazine next week at the next zazen practice. I'm not entirely sure why, but apparently they were having trouble finding foreign people who were doing it regularly (it's not the most pleasant practice in winter). Who knows, maybe it's an article about foreign people trying to solve improperly translated koans.

January 9, 2004

The temperature has finally taken a dip here, though evidently not nearly so much as back home. My Dad tells me that there is a bit of a 'winter chill' at home, which has dropped the temperature down to -27C...without the wind chill.

In some ways, it's hard to tell what's worse. Though the temperatures here don't even come close to that kind of arctic weather, the total lack of heating and insulation adds the difficult element of not being able to escape the cold at all. At Aikido last night, it was tough to warm my bare feet in the unheated building, and when someone accidentally stepped on my toes during practice, I though they might fall off.

Our apartment is no better. This morning I put on a kettle not so much because I wanted tea, but because the burner on the stove would heat up the kitchen a little bit. I then stood in front of the stove, jumping up and down, psyching myself up to go into the shower room, which is also known as 'The Coldest Place On Earth'. The tile floor gets so cold that it is like standing barefoot in a snow bank while you wait for the water heater to kick in so you can jump in the shower...and Heaven forbid someone should flush the toilet while you're waiting for that to happen!

I find it funny to compare the apartment we live in now to what I considered were 'necessities' when we were looking for an apartment in Toronto. Back then, I wanted lots of South facing windows, full-size four-burner stove and a new fridge, wrap-around counters (preferably an island, too) a good sized living room for entertaining and a large balcony. Consider that in comparison to having no counter, no oven, a small fridge that freezes everything or switches off and turns everything sour, small, uninsulated single pane windows (only in one room), no living room and a postage-stamp-sized shower that you need to share with the washing machine. Since there's no hot water in the bathroom sink, I need to fill a tomato can from the shower if I want to shave. Now that's living!

The good part of it is that you can honestly re-evaluate your definitions of want and need and be a little more realistic about living. A typical Canadian house seems excessive now (imagine a room used only occasionally for formal dining...and nothing else!) but I would have to list a counter suitably sized for cooking as a necessity. Heat and insulation also rank highly on my list, though multiple bathrooms and walk-in closets seem a tad frivolous. Hot water from every faucet is clearly a miracle of modern science, and a feature that I would love to see in my next abode, but I think that I can manage without a living room made big enough to house a big-screen TV (interestingly enough, North America is the only existing market in the world for big screen TV's, as no other region has enough people with large houses to constitute a viable market).

Needless to say, though I've enjoyed the scenic beauty that our few snowy days have provided, I look forward to spring, and to being able to feel my toes again.

January 6, 2004

Today was the first day back at work, even if it was a slightly truncated one at that. Word has it that Niki is safe and sound back in Canada, and life here is slowly changing back to normal.

Having visitors is always fun, and as a friend put it, it's very entertaining to walk around with someone with 'fresh eyes'. It's easy to become insensitive to the novelty of our surroundings here, so it's a treat to have someone around to remind you that lace seat covers aren't something you normally see in a taxi.

With the New Year coming in, Laura and I have started looking to what's coming next. The end of our working life in Japan is now only a few months away, and our wedding just beyond that. What's been most difficult, I think, is deciding just what to do next. There sure is an awful lot of life left to live, and as yet there are a lot of goals that remain unachieved. As always seems to happen at this contemplative time of year, we're putting lots of thought into just what we're supposed to do.

The funny thing about Laura and I sitting down to plan out our lives, though, is that it somehow ends up being not so much a list of 'plans', but more of a list of places. The flavour of the week this week; Provence....after we've gone to Italy, of course. Oh yeah, and Greece. Ah nuts.

January 1, 2004

That's right...2004. You blink and another year swings past. I hope that everyone had a great time ringing in 2004. This New Year's Eve and day have to rank among the most memorable, though nothing really turned as planned.

Today started off with a visit to a local shrine, where they were serving sake and a sweet rice drink called amazake around a bonfire at the foot of the Higashiyama mountains.

The sake was actually the best that I have ever had, and it was neat to see it served up in the traditional casks that I have always seen sitting around in shrines but have never seen opened. At any rate, it was a fun way to kick off the day, considering that at the time we were headed on our way for a hike up into the mountains. Nicole has been itching to get up into the mountains since she came to Kyoto, and the beautiful weather that we had today forced us to get ourselves up there. We hiked up to Daimonji mountain, where we arrived just in time to watch the sunset over the city for the first time in the New Year...and what a beautiful sunset it was.

Last night, however, was an altogether different experience. Our grand plan had involved going to Chion-in temple, where there is a ceremony to commemorate the passing of the year. The goings-on sounded incredibly interesting, and involved the monks ringing a giant bell 108 times.

The trouble was that on our way to the temple we got caught in a flood of human traffic, and actually became completely unable to do anything other than follow the crowd...even though it wasn't going where we wanted to go. The police were out in force, and they were herding all of the tens of thousands of people around us into Yasaka Shrine. Though we wanted to turn around and find an alternate route, we quickly found ourselves packed in and unable to go anywhere.

I'm definitely going to have to write more about the whole strange phenomenon of the midnight shrine visit, because it was so bizarre that we found ourselves at a total loss in trying to explain why anyone would want to be crammed into a shrine, waiting for hours to enter into what turned out to be a non-event. The streets were literally packed to capacity in all directions with people trying to get into the shrine, and at certain points the police had to control dangerous stampedes for the entrance. Once inside, more waiting was necessary before you could reach the central waiting area. The whole affair was made even more comical by the fact that we hadn't even intended to be there in the first place, but had been set on going somewhere else entirely. We didn't manage to get out of the shrine until at least 1:30 in the morning, despite the fact that we had been shoved in there more than two hours earlier. I'm only thankful that I didn't have to go to the bathroom!