Seeing Clearly

It's been awhile! I noticed that I don't take many black and white photos in Japan, but I finished a couple recently and want to share the aftermath. I like getting my black and white rolls back because they have often been in my camera for a month or two, since I don't usually use black and white. When I get the rolls back, there are usually pictures I barely remember taking, seasons that no longer exist, and events that are pushed back into my memory after nearly falling into the black depths of my mind.

I titled this post, "Seeing Clearly," mainly for the reason above - that letting my photos accumulate and viewing them after a length of time allows me to see the context of their experience from a removed and clear perspective. Kind of like when something ends and only after viewing it months later can you really understand what it was. Speaking of experiences and ends, I am currently in my last month in Akita, Japan. I think I realized how short this is when, a couple weeks ago, a friend and I were talking about something we had been wanting to do together (it might have been hiking, I forget), and after I said we should schedule it, she reminded me that there wasn't any free time left. It caught me so off guard. We always think there's so much time left. What an illusion.

I also realized the impact of this soon-to-be-ending when I gave a speech to all of my students recently, telling them I will be leaving at the end of July. Sometimes my students will do really cute or pure things, just extensions of their being kind-of-things. Today, I walked by the Kendo practice on my way to my car and saw one of the pudgy first-years, sword in hand, yelling the same grunt over and over while practicing a Kendo move, perhaps trying to commit it to memory. Watching him do that made me really love him for some reason. It also made me really sad. Sometimes I look at people that seem especially pure to me and it really kind of hurts to even look at them. I don't really understand it. I have another first year student who is literally about half as tall and half as thin as me - he's so tiny and truly adorable. Whenever he comes into the teachers' room and then exits, the other teachers all pine over his cuteness together. I love to look at him because he's so adorable, but it really hurts sometimes. I really don't know what it is. I think maybe I am imagining the true reality of him - that maybe when he looks in the mirror, he doesn't think he's adorable, or that maybe he does, but that he doesn't want to be adorable, he wants to be handsome, and that maybe one day, or perhaps already, he's done something that really just made him happy, maybe something silly, but that someone told him it was weird or that he shouldn't do it, and then he would stop because he felt bad about doing that thing. I think the same thing about my purest, most free-spirited students when I see them taking a test and knowing both that they do not know all the answers and that they probably feel bad about now knowing all the answers. That kills me. I also felt this way whenever I'd see a bunny on campus last year and we'd make eye contact and it would sit there, shaking at the terrifying sight of me, and then run away. I would just feel really bad about it. I'd stop looking at them or try to walk really slowly or take different routes because I hated knowing that I disrupted their innocence. Maybe that's what it is - disrupted innocence. I guess the fear I have when I look at my students is that maybe one day there won't be any innocence left to disrupt.

Cameras used: Ricoh GR1 (first roll ever!), Nikon FM10
Film used: Ilford Delta 400, Ilford HP5 Plus 400, respectively



This DJ's setup was great...lots of monitors with either splashes of colored patterns or all white, like this. Kind of made me feel like I was being brainwashed, but then again, I guess I kind of was. He's blurry in the photo because he kept throwing his head around the whole time. I think I sort of loved him.



Trying to read graffiti in Japanese is a task my brain is just not ready for.



I'm glad that Kohta is laughing in this picture because he and his wife (next to him) are always laughing.


The irony that they used those umbrellas when it wasn't raining and when I was in the rain (on the right), I was without an umbrella.


Now, it's sort of like this never existed.


My calligraphy teacher. He's so cute. I just noticed that he dresses like a hipster. His name is Oishi.


This is my calligraphy teacher's calligraphy teacher! I think that means he's on the same level as Zeus or something. He drew this huge calligraphy at our demonstration. They had to put the ink in a bucket because the brush was so large. When he started painting, he slammed the brush onto the paper and the ink splattered all over the floor, as far back as where I was standing. I put a little dab on my camera strap for good luck. I told him this later and showed him the ink spot but I don't think Gods really care about weird girls who dip their camera straps in splattered ink.



I was really amazed during winter when I discovered that snowflakes actually look like snowflakes. 



After living in Japan for almost a year, looking at this picture doesn't seem that novel to me. Actually, thinking about the fact that vending machines don't exist on every street corner in America seems kind of baffling. They are everywhere here. Most contain juice, tea, and canned coffee, but I have seen some (rarely) that have food, beer, or cigarettes. To buy the latter two, you need to have a special card verifying your age.


This girl was just a filler DJ who played a short set in between acts, but I really liked her. She didn't smile, didn't dance or move her body a lot, but she was always flicking switches and turning knobs and her music was really nice. I think the best way I could describe her is graceful.



I love airplanes.





This was at the Snow Dog festival in Yuzawa in February.

Snow!


I mean honestly, he's so cute.
He is always going to Shikoku, which is an island of Japan. There is a famous pilgrimage that you can do in Shikoku, visiting over 80 temples and walking for more than 700 miles through the countryside and mountain terrain. I think it took him a couple months to complete it the first time. But when he gets the chance, he goes and does parts of it for a couple weeks, always starting again where he left off. Pretty amazing for anyone - especially a retired old man. I admire his desire to explore his mind through the solitary beating of nature. I am not sure what he's looking for with these pilgrimages, but I hope he finds it.


I went to a concert in Tokyo about a month ago. It was all day with at least 50 DJs playing on four different floors. The other concert pictures in this post are also from that show. Every DJ also had a VJ that played videos during their set. Some played the videos on a variety of small monitors, others on huge backdrops, like this one. I really liked the visual (and extremely creative) representations that accompanied the music. The picture above is of Uyama Hiroto and Haruka Nakamura playing a live Nujabes set. It was so humbling and beautiful to hear and feel the instruments I'd heard in his songs so many times, but by their original creators, live. 

This was another one of the bands/DJs that performed. Most of the DJs were Nujabes-esque, with a chill, jazzy sound, but this group was extremely energetic and dancey. They had about 10-15 of those people in all white suits on stage who were dancing, jumping, and flailing during the whole set. They looked so purely happy that it made everyone else in the room blissfully happy too. At one point, someone from the crowd threw their sweatshirt at one of the white suit people and it hit her in the face. For a split second I wondered if she would be annoyed, but then I saw her peel it off her face and start swinging it around her head with a huge grin. I don't know why, but it made me so happy.


On a totally different take of busy-ness, this is my first glimpse of Cambodia, on my way to my hostel by Tuk Tuk. This was in the capital, Phnom Penh, which was very run down and filled with a huge amount of motorcycles and traffic. Sometimes it is amazing and beautiful for me to think about the fact that the two pictures above can exist simultaneously in the world.

Angkor Wat, Cambodia








Thanks for stopping by. Have a bright day!

Explorations through South East Asia: Cambodia

About a month and a half ago I had the opportunity to take some time off work and explore a few countries in South East Asia on my own accord. I already posted about my first stop, Thailand, and that entry is here. Today, I wanted to share about my second stop (which, unfortunately only lasted a few days), Cambodia. I arrived in its capital, Phnom Penh, and was immediately amazed by how congested the traffic was and that everyone quickly wove between each other on mopeds and motorcycles. If Thailand's traffic was the playoffs, then Cambodia was traffic olympics. As scary and tightly packed as it was, it was fun - kind of like being on a rollercoaster, but instead of seeing the clouds as you go through a loop, you'd peer at hundreds of eyes as they'd ride on past you. Phnom Penh itself seemed very poor, but the hostel I stayed at, though something like $5 a night, looked like a fancy nightclub. The bottom floor was a big restaurant and bar with white tablecloths and gleaming, colorful lights. It felt very strange that just outside our door were kids carrying baskets of bracelets and used books, trying to make a few dollars for school. I settled down to eat a late dinner there, and in fact, a group of kids came in to sell me things I didn't want. I gave them a couple dollars without taking any of their goods, wondering where my money would ever end up. I didn't really care, I thought. It was kind of nice just to talk to them, and once I'd given them some cash, our conversation was able to turn from, "pleeeeaseee buy this bracelet" to exchanging words about our lives. Though, soon it became, "Is that Angry Birds! Can I play?" to which my iPhone was quickly seized. I wondered where they'd heard of Angry Birds. And also why in the world it has gained such worldwide attention.

After that night I took a shuttle to Siem Reap, where Angkor Wat exists. I spent two full days patrolling Angkor Wat and the heaps of equally amazing temples that reside around it. Ta Prohm was probably my favorite, with huge trees growing out of old stone walls, seamlessly intertwining to hold together the ancient temple. A combination of man-made materials and nature becoming one - something like our own lives, I thought.

Instead of trying to recall more thoughts, I want to share a little of what I wrote down during that four-hour shuttle ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. Thoughts in the moment are much better than those I can try to conjure up almost two months later.

"I'm sitting in a van right now on my way to Siem Reap, Cambodia. I've been in here for about three hours, so there're 1.5 more to go. We stopped for food and all 14 Cambodian passengers and the driver piled out. I'm not that hungry and didn't want to risk getting left behind so I decided to wait in the van. The driver seemed amused and weirded out by this. I guess everyone usually gets out.
The drive through the countryside of Cambodia has been unbelievable. There are an innumerable amount of things to see along the way: cows, whose white skin contrasts beautifully against the lush layers of green fields, rows of wooden huts on stilts with families of people cooking food out front, elementary school children in tiny uniforms playing or walking home, naked babies hanging off their parents' bodies, tons of stray dogs (though usually only one at a time, like a solitary guard for their plot of land), clay-red roads of dirt, chickens hobbling around, and spectacular lake views, surrounded by masses of green and green and green. Occasionally my head will jerk back to the front as we squeeze by a truck or gang of motorcycles, just barely.

Lunch time just finished and everyone piled back into our van. One of the men held out a bag of mango he purchased and offered me some. It's amazing that you can suddenly feel hungry when someone is offering you their food; maybe we're not hungry for their lunch, but for whatever else they can give us. But sometimes, mango is all we get, and that's ok too."

Cambodia was a beautiful place. See you next Sunday.
-M

p.s. I recently finished another Haruki Murakami book called, Dance Dance Dance. It was very different from Norwegian Wood, but I enjoyed it as well. One of my favorite things to do after finishing a book is to go back and read all the parts I highlighted. I included some of my favorite highlights from both of these books in the post below. Enjoy!

Cameras: Nikon FM2, Nikon FM10
Film: Portra 160

"You are a good person, though. I can tell that much from looking at you. I can tell these things after seven years of watching people come and go here: there are people who can open their hearts and people who can't. You're one of the ones who can. Or, more precisely, you can if you want to."

"What happens when people open their hearts?"

Reiko clasped her hands together on the table, cigarette dangling from her lips. She was enjoying this. "They get better," she said.

"I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I'm much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That's just the kind of person I am. I'm the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that's fine with me. I don't mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match."

Face on the top right.

"Silence. Just like with her. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror."

"Now the phone company. All those lines coming together. Lines stretching all the way from this very room. Connecting me, in principle, to anyone and everyone. I could even call Anchorage if I wanted. Or the Dolphin Hotel, for that matter, or my ex-wife. Countless possibilities. And all tied together through the phone company switchboard. Computer-processed these days of course. Converted into strings of digits, then transmitted via telephone wires to underground cable or undersea tunnel or communications satellite, ultimately finding its way to us. A gigantic computer-controlled network.

But no matter how advanced the system, no matter how precise, unless we have the will to communicate, there's no connection."

I love trees.

“People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. Personally, I don't buy it.”

Yuki leaned against the car door. “But that's real hard, isn't it?” she said. “Real hard,” I said. “But it's worth trying for.”

Doing restoration on part of a temple. It kind of took away the ancient feel haha.

When I was little, I had this science book. There was a section on “What would happen to the world if there was no friction?” Answer: “Everything on earth would fly into space from the centrifugal force of revolution.” That was my mood.