Skip to main content

Bairin Koen, One Year Later

Image
By
It has been some time since my last post.  Matt and I are frantically cleaning and packing, getting rid of things and making seemingly endless runs to the post office.  It hardly seems like it's been nearly two years since we first laid eyes on our temporary home, yet here we are, at the end of our run as ALTs.  I won't miss the job, but I will miss the friends we made here.  Japan affected me deeply and I am grateful for the opportunity to live, work, and travel in this incredible country.  There will be time for reflective essays later, when we have toured Europe and are again in the ranks of America's unemployed youth... for now we must continue packing and cleaning.

To keep you busy as you wait for the thrilling conclusion of our world travels (did I mention we have quite the itinerary planned?), here are some shots from this year's plum blossom festival in Bairin Koen.  We visited on March 11, 2012, which you may know was the first anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake.  Last year we went to the festival a few days after the quake, still reeling from the physical and emotional aftershocks.  It seemed fitting to visit again.



This year the colors were more vivid and spanned the white-pink-red spectrum.  Matt, reading the signs on the trees, pointed out the subtle differences in the blossoms.  Above is a two-tired flower with two rows of petals and below is a blossom with single-tier petals.  It's a small and utterly beautiful detail that I may have overlooked otherwise, because I sometimes spend too long looking at the larger picture.  It reminded me that the component parts of a thing are sometimes more striking than the thing in its entirety.  I admit this next bit is cheesy, but it bears stating that I would like to look at my life in the coming months like I was able to look at these ume blossoms.  I'd like to bring the focus in and see the details.


See you next in Nagasaki!  日本ガンバレ!  
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Live in the Moment Without Fear

By
To Live in the Moment Without Fear  is a work by Yuko Shinoda from Gifu, Japan.  Danced by six women, the dance investigates what it means to be a part of a community threatened by a disaster that takes a life.  Premiered June 5th 2011 in Nagoya, Japan, the dance features a strong movement aesthetic that draws from traditional Japanese dance as well as contemporary styles and contact improvisation.  Shinoda's use of space and timing, as her dancers flow in-and-out of solos, duets, trios, and unison, creates a sense that the dancers are unified and alone at the same time.  In the end, Shinoda's view of life is clear: we must tend to the fallen, but we must never surrender ourselves to fear while we are still alive.
3 comments
Read more

Yokohama, Day Four: Roppongi Hills and Shibuya

By
We met Nik's girlfriend, Megumi, for an amazing lunch on the way to Roppongi Hills, where we met up with her friend Misa. Roppongi Hills is an incredibly upscale shopping district in Tokyo, even more upscale than the Ginza. I couldn't afford to look at the stores. We passed by a German-influenced illumination display, honoring 150 years of German-Japanese friendship. It was really beautiful and seemed traditional (I'm going to run it by my German friend to test its authenticity).  In the first two pictures you can see Japanese people chowing down on dark lager and brats, as well as a lovely carved statue with figurines and candles that constantly turned on a podium. Misa was hungry so we got her a lunch snack, and when Matt saw a bagel place he succumbed to his Jewishness. Pictured is his bagel with cream cheese and lox, which he ate in the face of Christmas with Nik. Roppongi Hills also has many beautiful sculptures, including a giant spider of which I didn'...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gamagori Fireworks Festival

By
Takeshima, at low tide. Every year, on the last day of July, a big fireworks festival is held in Gamagori, Japan.  Fireworks are very big in Japan, with each major city priding itself on its particular display, and swearing up and down to anyone who will listen that their fireworks are the best in the nation.  Gifu's displays were canceled this year because of the earthquake, so we took the opportunity to travel a little more than an hour by express train to Gamagori.  It's a cute little town, not far from Okazaki, with a famous island that is entirely shrine space (seen in the picture to the right). It was a wonderful, if long, day.  Four of us set out from Gifu and picked two more friends up on the way to the island.  We arrived early, perhaps too early, but we did miss the worst of the afternoon sun as we wandered around the island.  Even though I was very diligent about my SPF 50 sunblock, I still managed to get burned on both shoulders before the...
1 comment
Read more