and what's THIS!? One of Japan's famed blue-haired old ladies!!? Hahahaha. They were everywhere. Again taken from the starbucks on the same day 

the winter view from my favourite place to chill in Sapporo- the 4 chome plaza starbucks! 

JR (japan rail) train to home pulling into sapporo station 

believe it or not, this is the inside of a MALL. It had a river, a waterfall, and gardens as well as a windmill and a giant old beer factory. 

disdain
I am feeling slightly sad. Probably because of that damn emo music that we were listening to in the car on the way home. I don't care if "nobody cares at all". Get over it. Or slit your wrists. One or the other, but either way quit whining and stop releasing records about how nobody cares about you. Fuck.

It was the going away party for kids from work today. It was all fun until it was over. Then it was like sudden withdrawal. Not seeing these kids again is a pretty sad prospect. But I'll still be seeing Frank on a pretty regular basis as far as I'm concerned.

See Melissa! It does look like Orthanc, doesn't it? 

temple in snow 

statues

Oh no Melissa, you shouldn't have asked. Oh well. The statues are to the goddess who protects children, and those symbols you see on them are names. Names that parents have given to their babies who were never born.

goodbye japan 

cherry blossom viewing picnic (hanami)

This was on one of the many days that I went to meet Motonari at Hokkaido University. Taken on May 12th, just when the sakura or cherry trees were blooming. In Japan when the cherry trees are blooming everyone goes out to have picnics and barbecues and look at them. One thing of note is that Hokkaido is renowned in Japan for it's incredibly late bloom times.

miko and natalia

Yeah. It looks blurry because it is blurry. This is a picture of one of the miko of Hokkaido Jingu, the main Shinto shrine of Hokkaido. For those of you who don't know, the mikos work as shrine maidens and supposedly have to be virgins to qualify for the job. The girl on the right is one of the exchange students from my school, visiting from Chile.

view from the house

Just to give you an idea of exactly how close the mountains were (from my second host family). I really, really do miss them. It's some kind of weird psychological thing.

shinrin koen
I really did love that forest. It was completely silent, and while I was there snow was always falling in a thick, secret kind of way, like feathers falling from the sky. But it was the kind of emptiness that felt so full. The air was strangely charged. Very alive.

lavender fields

So I figured out how to add the photos... or rather I downloaded that "hello" thing. So now I can add photos. So this is a photo of the lavender fields that I went to just before I left. I already sent a different picture to everybody that knows this address... well, maybe not everyone, but most of them, so there may not be much point. But oh well.

Anyway, in other news. I'm back in town. I was planning on going through and trying to individually surprise everyone but... yeah. I can't really think of ways to nor do I have the energy/attention span/motivation to. I might be having a welcome back party at some point. But we'll see. I really do want to see everyone again.

Today it's kind of humid. When the weather is such that I stick to chairs and other pieces of furniture, I tend to wish for one of two things: death or a lake to swim in.

CDs I'm craving lately: Mizerable (I can't believe I left it in Japan), Scarlet's Walk, Without You I'm Nothing

there is a blue which speaks to me of divine things

It just started raining, and I'm in love.
With the rain that is.

The second part of that post, only changed to fit now.

A few minutes ago, this girl that I've been talking to lately and her friend came running down the hall at me. "WAIT a minute" they said. I waited.

"Ichi, ni, san, JE T'AIME!!!"

And then they ran.

Hahaha, I love these kids.

I was just reminded that the reason why I haven't been updating my blog like a maniac is not because I don't have anything to talk about, I just thought that I didn't.

So now I will talk about the two themes suggested to me; electronic toilets and being attacked by gaijin-loving japanese girls.

So I'll start with the toilets, because, well, I don't know why. They're quite interesting. Many of them have heated seats, which is quite nice compared to the sometimes cold seats one... encounters on frigid winter mornings in Canada. A lot of them have sort of... soft seats. But one of the weird things is that they also have all these crazy controls on the side. And what are they for you ask? Well... for washing things. But the funny thing is that the water is always heated, and you can control the jet's location, power, motion, everything. It's so foreign.

Hey readers,

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I actually forgot that I had a blog. Hehe. Anyway, here's something that I wrote the other day, just kind of having a dialogue with myself. It may be interesting. But who knows. See ya! SOON


I am writing with the purpose of finding an idea. I am not yet sure as to which idea it is, but this is typical and to be expected as it is an idea that I have never before known. In this particular instance I am writing without the crutch of music to massage and grope my creative mind (I was going to say the instrument of my creation, then realized the phallic undertones of such phrase and changed my mind).

Yesterday an idea came into my head and out of my mouth, which I immediately accepted to be my own. My roommate Tokio said to me that he has two girlfriends. My mouth twisted in disgust. My mind immediately told me that it was wrong, and that this Tokio was less than I had thought him to be. I accepted this idea to be my own, and judged him next to the set of morals that I had labeled as my own.

Today, however, I realized that this set of morals was not my own. This idea of having more than one female “love” interests being wrong was not one of my original thoughts. It was one that society had projected into my brain and that I had accepted to be true. From this point I had come to forget that this was an idea that had been introduced into my head, and it merged into the set of ideas, values and rules that have come to define something of what I am.

It makes me begin to wonder how far this veritable brain-washing extends. What percentage of my kangae-kata is truly my own and what percentage was drafted and grown like the shoot of a plant?

The Dark Side
***************************************************************************************
The Light Side

I am writing because I have found an idea. However, what interests me about this idea is that it was an original idea. It is one that I know came from me. But what interests me is that it is an idea I know that someone else has also created in the past.

The idea was very similar to that of Plato’s cave. I concluded after an hour-long thinking period that people were only the product of light shone through moving water. This was originally in my head only applied to physical features, but around 5 minutes after the first conclusion I extended this idea onto morals and personality. All of it was only a collection of light that had been shone onto something else, and the light itself was the actual essence of the person or thing.

Moments later I noticed the nostalgia of this idea, well, not nostalgia, but my subconscious mind was notifying my conscious mind of the existence of a very similar idea in my memory banks. After a few moments of picking through the finer mental images I found Plato’s Cave to be the idea that my subconscious mind was trying to notify me of. I smiled and said something like “no way” out loud. I had realized this idea without any reliance on anyone else’s ideas, and had by sheer coincidence come to the same conclusion that a very famous philosopher came to a long time ago.

Shaken, and stirred

As in earthquakes and lemon tea (or Raymone Tee as the japanese say). Colds are not fun, especially in foreign countries.

I Lost My Bracelet!

I did. And it makes me sad.
dare ga fusagareta kono hitomi no oku ni fureru no darou
yureru kagerou no naka de mitsumeteita tsuki ga warau

I think god is trying to make me steal. He keeps stealing things from me, and then making everything expensive. But Karma's a bitch, and I don't want it to bite me in the ass.

I have come up with a way to send pictures, and feel like the biggest dumbass on earth that I didn't think of it earlier. I just bought a floppy disk, and save them off my laptop, then bring them to school. So over the next few days/weeks, expect pictures.

So here you must vote on what I send first. The choices are:

1.Temple Pictures
2.Shrine Pictures
3.Kimono Pictures (including some bad pictures of me in a yutaka)
4.Debbie and My fieldtrip to Sapporo Old City Hall (including some nice shots of the peach? blossoms)
5.Hokkaido Shrine fieldtrip pictures
6.Sakura Pictures (not that good)
7.Cape Kamui pictures
8.Various japanese "cultural" pictures (including a male Yamamba HAHAHA!)