Japan: Explorations Down South

My calligraphy teacher is a serious badass. He's won tons of "best in show" awards in our region and has shown his calligraphy in museums in Tokyo. Usually, he teaches my friend and I each week, but today when I walked into our little classroom, I saw framed calligraphy pieces strewn all around the room, with a stack of loose papers by his side. He wanted to show us many of his own works. All of the thick pieces of paper had haikus he had drawn on them, and he probably went through 15 different ones, showing us each character and describing its meaning. They were all so...elegant. They bore only a few words, but carried so much meaning with them. Afterward, he asked us which our favorite was. I knew exactly what mine was, and when I told him, he happened to have a couple of signed "practice" versions in his stack that we got to keep! To me, the haiku represents the fragile life of something that at once was beautiful, but eventually meets its own end, falling back to earth.
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This is the haiku, first in Japanese and then the translation:

さくらさくら

さくさくら 

ちるさくら

Cherry Blossoms, Cherry Blossoms

Blooming Cherry Blossoms

Falling Cherry Blossoms

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And now, the last installment of pictures from the trip I took in January with one of my best friends. We went to Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, and Osaka for about two weeks. I live roughly eight hours by bus from Tokyo, and about twice that from all those other places we went. It was really fun and definitely made me appreciate Japan in even more ways. Enjoy the pictures! I am off to Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia next week, so expect something new when I get back. Until then!

Cameras: Nikon FM2, Nikon FM10
Film: Portra 400, Ilford Delta 3200


Previous: Kansai Trip, Pt. 1, Kansai Trip, Pt. 2

There are tons of awesome staircases in Japan.



This was when we went to see Justice in Osaka on our last night. Amazingly fun!



The friend I traveled with has the initials, "MK." Well, so did every taxi in Kyoto. It was like his kingdom. ...Of taxis.



Kyoto's International Manga Museum. It was FULL of every kind of manga and comic book you could imagine. And even more filled with heaps of people, of all ages, sitting around and reading comic books from the shelves, sitting on staircases, chairs, carpets, anywhere.





This is my friend, Michael's first time eating natto, which are fermented soybeans. They are pretty notorious in Japan for being the kind of food you either hate or love. It smells like a mixture of feet and blue cheese and the consistency is really gooey, as you can see.

This deer only had one eye.

This is Kengo. He was situated in the bunk beneath mine at one of our hostels, and while I'm sitting on my bunk, I hear my friend Michael casually ask him, "So, what's your name?" And from there we all chatted for awhile and went out together for the next couple nights. He was a cool guy.









-m :)

My Favorite Poem

Sometimes I repeat that last little stanza in my head when I need inspiration.  I wish I could accurately explain how much I love that stanza and this poem.

“Eleven” by Archibald MacLeish 

1            And summer mornings the mute child, rebellious,

            Stupid, hating the words, the meanings, hating

            The Think now, Think, the Oh but Think! would leave

            On tiptoe the three chairs on the verandah

5            And crossing tree by tree the empty lawn

            Push back the shed door and upon the sill

            Stand pressing out the sunlight from his eyes

            And enter and with outstretched fingers feel

            The grindstone and behind it the bare wall

10            And turn and in the corner on the cool

            Hard earth sit listening. And one by one,

            Out of the dazzled shadow in the room,

            The shapes would gather, the brown plowshares, spades,

            Mattocks, the polished helves of picks, a scythe

15            Hung from rafters, shovels, slender tines

            Glinting across the curve of sickle-shapes

            Older than men were, the wise tools, the iron

            Friendly with earth. And sit there, quiet, breathing

            The harsh dry smell of withered bulbs, the faint

20            Odor of dung, the silence. And outside

            Beyond the half-shut door the blind leaves

            And the corn moving. And at noon would come,

            Up from the garden, his hard crooked hands

            Gentle with earth, his knees still earth-stained, smelling

25            Of sun, of summer, the old gardener, like

            A priest, like an interpreter, and bend

            Over his baskets.

                                                And they would not speak:

            They would say nothing. And the child would sit there

30            Happy as though he had no name, as though

            He had been no one: a leaf, a stem,

            Like a root growing—