Bad Bloggers

I just saw that we haven't posted anything here for 2-1/2 months. That's a long time, but especially so now given all the stuff that has been going on. So maybe I'll just put down a list for those who haven't been talking to us, or who haven't been here for these events. (And by "list" I mean, of course, a series of headings followed by my usual rambling attempt at getting a tiny fraction of the experience into words.)

Samba Festa:
This happened in mid-July. It was the first big event of our samba group's new 2013 theme and was supposed to be awesome. The festa is a day-long event in the harbor area of Kobe, which seems to host many similar festivals throughout the year. Unfortunately, it was extra hot and humid and both of the concerts were outside. I was on video/picture duty since I didn't have a costume and wasn't playing that day. To combat the heat I was running around with wet handkerchiefs around my neck and packs of frozen sports drink that I would use to stave off the heat by drinking and using as cold packs. (This was one of the many experiences I had this summer that once again proved that I am no match for this kind of weather. In contrast, most people were downing ¥100 iced coffees, which I think would have simply made me ill.)
Anyway, it was awesome... until the rain came. The rain was great for destroying the heat, but decidedly horrible for the festival because the lightning that came with it meant that they had to wait so long that the competition was canceled, meaning that our group never got to really play on their own. Instead there was just a "samba all stars" jam session with a mass of drummers on stage and dancers moving around in a big circle.

Visitors:
The week after Samba Festa, Rachel's family came to visit. We did all sorts of awesome things with them, which took us back and forth between Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, Tokyo, Mt. Fuji, and several other places. The timing of the visit missed the bulk of the hottest weather this summer, but it was still during the long march up the mercury that seems to characterize June through late-August here.
The central event of the trip was a climb up Mt. Fuji for me, Rachel and her dad. We did it over the course of about 24 hours. The uphill was hard going with a sudden rainstorm and amazingly strong winds coming around from the north side of the mountain. It would have been slow anyway, but I think the weather added at least 1-2 hours to our total time on the ascent. In any event, the climb was fantastic, as were the views (when we could get them) and the lounging on the summit the next morning was absolutely worth the high-altitude sunburn we got.
We also got to see lots of small towns (Magome in the Kiso Valley and Matsue on the north/west coast) that we probably never would have visited without the familial impetus.

August:
Is hot.

Asakusa Samba Carnival:
This was on the last day of August and was finally the big chance for the group to do the full 2013 song and dance routine. Being in August (even though Tokyo is usually not quite as hot as Kansai) it was damn hot. As before, I was extremely glad I was not wearing a costume. Also as before, I was on video duty, this time officially (I even had an armband). Even though I wasn't playing (and at this point I was actually kind of jealous of those who were) it was pretty amazing to be walking along with the parade. Aside from one practice the week before, I had only ever seen the routine in the crampt rehearsal space in Kobe, with the full costumes and the full width of the street to walk around in, the effect of the choreography and the float was pretty awesome.
I might have more to write later about this, but I was really quite impressed with the whole thing. Normally I'm not a big fan of parades. I usually come away thinking that they are too hot, too long and more than a little hokey. But a big parade like this with some actual unity and competition (they have 3 levels of groups, and several prizes) made the experience much more engaging.

September:
Is less hot. It is, nevertheless, still hot.

25 days:
Until we fly back to the US. Hopefully we will have an apartment in which to place ourselves...

Celebrations

Richard has gotten back blogging, so I thought I'd contribute some photos. We've had some great celebrations over the last few months. The pics today are from two of the biggest. The first was the 15th anniversary of our samba escola G.R.E.S. Sol Nascente. (Escola literally means "school" in Portuguese. In the case of samba, it means more like group or club.) Sol Nascente means "rising sun" in Portuguese. For our 15th anniversary party, the group rented a restaurant with a small stage in Kobe and proceeded to make music, drink, eat and be merry for an evening. There were lots of small performances by affiliated music groups, as well as a samba performance by another escola in Kobe. Finally, this year's members topped it off with a performance ourselves. I've posted some pics on facebook, but here are some of my favorites from the evening.

Dark beer and a guitar. 

The venue of our party. You can kind of see the small stage at the end of the room.

Wearing our bateria shirts, which show that we're musicians with the group.

The dancer in purple and the guy in the white shirt are our leaders and the founders of the school. The three girls in front are in bear costumes with LED sunglasses...It's an inside joke, don't ask.

After the official party, many people stayed around for a "pagode," basically an informal jam session of relaxed samba music.

The other big party we went to recently was the wedding reception of a samba friend.

The first plate of food at the reception, which was Chinese style. You can see lobster salad, fried chicken, pickled cucumbers, fried fish, rolls of various kinds and tons more that I can't remember. 

The bride and groom cutting the cake. Most of the cake was a wooden/plastic form, with a small piece of actual cake/whipped cream for them to cut into for pictures.

Remnants of several courses of food on our table. Still left are some amazing candied sweet potatoes and sesame mochi balls with sweet red beans inside. It's proof of how stuffed we were that there were still some on the table.

Our table of samba friends.

So there's an old Japanese joke about how businessmen put their ties on their heads when really drunk and letting loose. Our friend here isn't so drunk, but the atmosphere was ripe for a little joke about ties on heads.

Me with the bride in her 3rd costume of the event, a Korean hanbok. (Her husband's family is Korean-Japanese.)

Richard showing off his new bow tie.

Here we're at the second party, which was held at a restaurant not too far from the reception hall. The reception had tons of family and was more formal, this party is for the bridge and groom and their friends. 

The bride singing samba at the second party.

Richard making friends.

Oh, and we both won jerky in the raffle. Other prizes included gift certificates to restaurants and various food prizes.  

So, you can see it's been a fun month! In July we have another performance with our samba group and then my parents and brother will be visiting from the states, so it should be another interesting month!

These are some cool postcards, Or, "Holy tourists, Batman!"

Yesterday we did another hike in our Fuji preparation campaign (or キャンペーン, if you prefer). With few exceptions, if you want to go hiking here, you also end up walking through temple complexes. Most of the time this is awesome, and as a result we've seen a lot of little temples that I would have never expected to be there - especially the strings of smaller temples on the now-secondary paths between the towns in the valley and the bigger temple on the top of a peak. From what I understand many of these have specific functions and were usually originally funded by wealthy individuals. In between are numerous smaller shrines that either commemorate singular acts of devotion/religious contemplation or that are set up by individuals in connection with a family member or local spirit. So, these backwoods trails are quite nice and we basically have the trail to ourselves with the exception of the occasional local retiree who walks the trail with apparent regularity. 

In the city, however, things are a little different. Because the terrain around here is so thoroughly composed of a regular alternation of plains and hills, most cities butt right up to the edge, with their important temples just up the hill in the woods. Anyway, to get to the point, yesterday we went to Kyoto on an "eco trail" that takes you through all the famous sites in the city without using any motorized vehicles. It makes things more interesting than most tourists trails by taking you up through the hills and the quiet residential streets instead of just directly from temple to temple along routes lined with gift shops and fancy small restaurants with overpriced lunches. So, the parts in the mountains were awesome and a good workout, but when we got to our stopping point, things got a little out of control. That is, we were confronted with a mass of tourists making their rounds. 

As the summer progresses this experience seems to become more and more common. We go somewhere for any number of reasons, do whatever we have to do, and then on the way back home or through to another activity, we have to wade through a flood of tourists. I don't know particularly why I am bringing this up except that their presence keeps taking us by surprise. Which actually has given me pause to think that we actually have very little contact with other foreigners here. This is in contrast to the majority of Americans here for work, who seem to live in the same buildings/neighborhoods, work together, hang out together, etc. I'm not trying to say that we have somehow assimilated (indeed, I am constantly reminded how big the cultural knowledge gap is for me) but the last few weeks of running unexpectedly into tourists has underlined the fact that we really don't interact with other foreigners. 

Side note: the TV is on while I'm writing this and we are watching the local cable company channel, which mostly features programs looking at shops and attractions in the Osaka area. The segment that just finished involved them sending and a personality to an unknown location to explore. This time it was a children's water park. Therefore the segment consisted of him trying out all the rides while the kids looked on in slightly confused amazement. As always, Japanese TV is kinda bizarre. 

Long time

I just realized it's been a month and a little bit since there was last any blogging up here. Which is not terribly surprising since we've been busy. Lots of samba stuff couple with an uptick in general activities. In addition to music and language activities, it seems like we've had lots of little paperwork related activities to deal with (or at least Rachel has). For myself I've been writing quite a bit for the dissertation - I tried to set myself a general goal of getting a good draft of two of my chapters done by the time we return to the US. In any event, it seems like we are just too distractable or just plain mentally tired when the blogging part of the day arrives. (I've tried to blog a few times, but I ended up deciding I was being too pretentious and caught up in the my own words...)

We also took a small trip up to Tokyo at the beginning of June, which was pretty cool. We ende up at the National Diet Library for a large block of time on each of two days. Rachel had the most to do there, of course, but I also managed to find some good material on French theater.

Anyway, I'll try to run down the basics of the last month.

梅雨（tsuyu= rainy season)
This year's rainy season actually started with a week or so of annoyingly humid and hot weather as a typhoon passed to the south of Japan. It actually reminded me of some summers in Madison, where for some reason the rains often pass to either the north or south but drag through all the moist air in their wake. The last couple of weeks have been nice and cool and rainy, so we've had a few extra days of wearing spring clothing and not hurting when we go outside.

Training (=more heat)
So in a little over a month we will be climbing Mt. Fuji. We may not make it to the summit, but we will be on it. We've been trying to train over the last few months with bigger hikes throughout the area and have made some progress, but now we really have to focus on keeping moving everyday in some way. Essentially, we want to make sure we are "in shape" and have some endurance, because climbing Fuji is more about endurance and only partly about the actual hiking.
We have, however, run into an interesting experience during this training. We've been trying to get down to the pool a few times a week, which is pretty awesome, but it is damn hot in there. At first I thought it was just psychological, but then I looked at the wall and they liste the temperature of the air and the water, which average 33ºC and 31ºC, respectively. I understand that we don't want to keep the water too cold, especially with the pool largely filled with retired and elderly swimmers, many of whom are actually learning to swim and therefore aren't generating much of their own heat. But seriously.

NHK
I almost forgot about this. We (might) be on TV. A local camera crew from NHK came to film our most recent samba rehearsal. Once Japan made it into next year's world cup (which, in cased you haven't seen any of the crazy news coming out of there, is in Brazil) and so everyone is obsessed with Brazilian things. Anyway, they didn't interview us specifically, but there was a big shot of the group doing a cheer, so we might be in that.

So I guess that's all for now - I was gonna write the other day some stuff about language and my continuing/evolving sense of Japanese and how that has influenced my social interactions. I still might write it, but I won't make any promises.

Photo dump

We've been a bit sparse in our blogging recently but today we have not one, but TWO posts for you. I've got a smattering of photos from April and May and continue below for some prime Richard-rambles.

One of the ways you know it's spring in Japan is the addition of the sakura (cherry blossom) forecast to the regular weather forecast. While Japan's sakura are rightfully famous, there are other spring flowers that are also celebrated and bring out the crowds. At the end of March, we went out to the large park surrounding Osaka Castle to see the ume (plum) blossoms. We caught them just past their peak, but the plum grove was still pretty incredible (and very popular). 

Various plants were for sale just outside the grove, in case you want to take some plum blossoms home with you.

We settled for some plum flavored ice cream. Yum!

A few weeks later, the cherry blossoms began to really bloom. Hanami (literally "see flowers") parties are incredibly popular. Work groups, school friends, dates, anyone that can find an excuse hits the parks with a tarp to sit on, food to snack on, and some alcohol to drink. In early April, we went to two of these organized cherry blossom-viewing parties, but we also had a little picnic ourselves.

Our picnic location near the moat around Osaka Castle.

Our trusty bikes also enjoyed the view.

Rows of cherry trees line the moat and several roads around the park. It is very common to see cherry blossom trees planted around lakes and rivers.

Our selfie-shot taking abilities are improving.

We've also been taking hikes around Osaka, Kyoto, and Nara. Here are a few pictures from a recent hike around Kurondo Park.

Down the hill you can see the city of Osaka.

 As many of you know, we've joined a samba group in Kobe. Our first performances were this last weekend (see Richard's post below for more). We wore some pretty fabulous costumes, as you can see here. The best part is that our costumes (for the singers and guitarists) were by far the tamest on stage. But don't worry, my costume for the August samba parade in Tokyo features red feathers, a crazy top hat, and enough trimmings and whatnot to satisfy Liberace.

Biz

This is now the third time today I've opened up the blog editor, but I keep getting deterred by feeling that we've had both nothing going on and too much. I suppose this, however, is the sad story of our year. The weekdays have almost too much free time for us to handle: wake up, breakfast, café for writing, dinner, home. The weekends are usually quite busy, with a combo of research outings and then samba rehearsals. I've also been working to get my dissertation into some sort of readable form and not just a mass of notes and scattered analyses. It's all really quite taxing. (Sorry, I realize deadpan sarcasm doesn't telegraph well in text...)

But now I'm finally writing (and you reap the benefits) because we are finally having a few days of relaxation after a busy several weeks after we got back from Okinawa. Our relaxed weekdays have been invaded by lessons and other responsibilities and then our weekends have gotten even busier than usual. There was a pay-off though, which was our two days of performance in the Kobe Matsuri (festival) with our samba group. For this event, as will be the case for the others we are in, Rachel was singing and I was on guitar (and yes, we were super cool). We had something of a hiccup with my instrument, however, when the pre-amp I brought appeared to be broken. We managed to carry on, but my contribution to Saturday's performance was rather quiet. (Side note: we performed that day on the "Anpanman stage". Anpanman is a superhero, whose head is made of a sweet bun filled with red bean paste. It's both an awesome pastry and unbeatable hit with the under-5 set.)

Then on the Sunday we had the parades portion of the weekend and were greeted by rain. I've noticed that weather forecasts here usually oversell the possibility of rain and we have adjusted our behavior accordingly. This time, however, the rain did come when expected and in the amounts they expected. Feathers needed to come off of dancers costumes, the drummers need to constantly wipe the water off of their instruments (with a supplemental hair dryer session in between our two parades)... We, however, got the best part of the deal with a sweet ride in the audio system truck, which was kinda surreal. 

Oh, and did I mention the gold-lamée caftans we wore? Well, it was quite a look, and I'm sure Rachel will later post some here for your laughter enjoyment. 

We also made a small jaunt to the town of Otsu on Lake Biwa. Biwa is north and east of Kyoto and is the largest body of fresh water in Japan. The landscape is pretty awesome and struck me as a stereotypically Japanese: a scattering of large domed mountains and hills with flat plains in between. Anyway, we had a pretty good time and managed to act like real adult tourists; we rented bikes, saw several temples, ate lunch on with a lake-view, bought local pottery, etc. Our most heroic feat was a long descent from about half-way up Hiezan, which is a mountain shared by Ostu/Biwa and Kyoto. It has some rather old Buddhist temples (at the top, which we didn't see) and is the home to one of the early esoteric sects of Buddhism. The descent was longer and more demanding than we had expected, mostly because it was labeled as a "nature trail" but ended up being a poorly maintained temple access foot-road that wound back-and-forth and up-and-down the mountain. When we emerged back into town the rain had begun to fall steadily, but we were ok with our rain jackets in tow --- nonetheless, we were inquired after by a woman in her car, who offered to let us have her umbrella.

We politely declined. 

Anyway, Lake Biwa is quite nice, and only an hour away by train, so I think we'll be up there again soon. 

Other highlights of the past month include: baseball (impromptu trip on a weekday night), a salsa festival, and a plan for more baseball and research trip to Tokyo. 

Earthquake means.... GO! STOP! GO! wait, i'm confused....

As you might guess from the title, we had an earthquake. It was yesterday (Saturday) morning at 5:33am (according to the Japan Meteorological Association) and was at 6 shindo units on the JMA seismic intensity scale at its strongest point on an island in the inland sea and about 4-5 here in the Osaka area. Shindo units refer to the degree of shaking produced by the earthquake and not the relative strength (click here for the wiki). According the USGS, it was 6.3 magnitude, which is the strongest earthquake I've ever experienced, though it was pretty short. Anyway, we were fine and everything else was fine, but it was pretty scary for a few seconds (we also have confirmed the functionality of Rachel's earthquake alarm app on her phone, which started making a hellish noise at us as soon as the shaking started).
So after trying to get to sleep and getting woken up by our own alarm in the middle of deep sleep, we got ready to try to get picked up for a gig in a countryside town on the far side of Kyoto. We checked the train schedule to make sure everything was fine, knowing that even small tremors (which this certainly was not) trigger automatic checks of certain tracks, though we figured that 4-5 hours after the quake everything would be relatively back to normal, even if slow. This impression was initially confirmed by a check of TV and the JR website, but when we got to Osaka station we were overwhelmed by huge lines, absurd delay notices (one had a train with an arrival time of 730am, with a delay of 120 minutes... we were there at 1030am) and lots of disgruntled travelers and people trying to get to work. Pretty soon the delay notices turned to this:

track/train information screens at JR Osaka

As you can see, only one line has any trains listed, which is the elevated city loop line. Everything else has been replaced by a message saying that they are inspecting tracks, which means no trains are running and they have no word on when they will start up again. 

The map of the trains also shows the train delays and suspensions:

So basically we were screwed. And the other train companies were having similar problems. 

But after several minutes of back and forth phone calls we arranged for our ride, who we were supposed to meet at a train station outside of the city, to come pick us up at the station. 

Our reward for this trouble was an afternoon of great pagode music and delicious Brazilian food. 

Here is Rachel doing some drumming at the pagode: