Cherry blossoms 桜

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It's hard to believe, but cherry blossom season was almost two months ago! It's also hard to believe that I didn't transfer the photos onto my computer for so long... Anyway, Minami-ku, our area of Yokohama, is known for the cherry blossoms along the Ooka river, about five blocks from our apartment.
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During the two week period of sakura we took frequent walks along the river and also enjoyed a hanami party (flower viewing party) at Maita park with a bunch of our friends.
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In this last photo on the right you can see a few of the many food and beer vendors that set up along the river, as well as a distant view of Landmark Tower just right of center.

Suehiro 末廣

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Between school, park time, and a party at a friend's house, I was left with little time to post yesterday, thus today I'm making up for it.
Today was Joe's last day of work, so on my way home this afternoon I stopped by Suehiro, our local cake shop, to pick up two pieces of celebratory cake. Above is the shop exterior, below is the cake case. The shop is run by two very elderly ladies who are always excited to chat the few times I've stopped by. In addition to European style cakes they also stock Japanese style rice-based desserts and lots of traditional rice cake and dried fruit snacks. I opted for a piece of strawberry shortcake for Joe and chocolate cake for me. お疲れ様、ジョー！
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Beverages 飲み物

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Yesterday was my last full day of classes and the weather was beautiful, so after I returned home from school we went to the park to enjoy the afternoon. On the way we stopped by the Family Mart to pick up some snacks and drinks such as tea (above) and juice (below). I'm also including a photo of the prepared coffees (last). I love that the tea in Japan is unsweetened, I can't stand the super sweet high fructose corn syrup drinks that pass for tea in U.S. convenience stores, and while I like to make my own tea at home, the ease of picking up a real bottle of green tea (for me) or barley tea (for Joe) while out and about is a nice everyday luxury. The boxed drink section includes melon juice, apple juice, orange juice, grape juice and fruit teas as well as banana, peach, and plum drinks and sometimes my favorite, aloe juice (though not in this photo).
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Processed coffee, while nothing like the real thing, is great for caffination while traveling or out in the city for the day. I'm fan of the Mt. Rainer brand Cafe Latte (middle shelf left side).
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Suica Commercials

A fun compilation of Suica commercials.

Sakuragicho 桜木町

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Every day I commute through Sakuragicho station, as stated on my pasmo commuter pass (Maita-Sakuragicho). The pasmo card also functions as a rechargeable smart card ticket, allowing me to add money to it for use when I travel elsewhere in the Yokohama-Tokyo area on the bus or train, or to buy things at vending machines or convenience stores by touching my card to an electronic pad.

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Above is the JR section of Sakuragicho station, always bustling.

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After walking up three long escalators from the subway and through the JR section of the station, I exit on the bay side of the station to this view of Minato Mirai. From left to right, the Kenmin Kyosai Plaza building, Landmark Tower, and Queens Square. This view always lifts my morning, and I love to look up and see Landmark Tower, the tallest building in Japan, in different weather, be it clouded in, raining, or sunny.
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Like most things in Japan, the trains have mascots to help promote them, above is the Pasmo robot mascot on the right, the Suica penguin mascot (a similar train pass) on the left. Below is Hamarin, the mascot for the Yokohama subway. I have linked each mascot to a youtube video. I'm not sure who made up the hilarious Hamarin video, but the Pasmo and Suica videos are Japanese tv commercials. Enjoy!

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Japanese 日本語

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As my year of intensive Japanese study at the IUC comes to an end, I've been thinking about how far I have come linguistically. Japanese is an incredibly complex language (see here and here), and in learning the language for academic use my classmates and I are engaged in a very difficult activity that goes far beyond the mastery of daily conversation. Many of the articles that we read in Kushida sensei's art history class would be difficult for a native speaker, and the classical texts that I've been tackling as of late are rewarding, but exhausting. On a rainy day a number of weeks ago, after a particularly grueling afternoon of coffee shop reading, I decided to clear my head by wandering along the shopping street at Kannai. I popped into a Yurindo bookstore, and remembering a conversation with a classmate about the relative ease of reading Murakami Haruki in the original Japanese, I picked up a 400 yen paperback version of 神の子どもたちはみな踊る (after the quake) as the collection of short stories seemed approchable to me. I found the book on the second floor of the sprawling shop amongst the small sized paperback versions of a variety of books. As many Japanese people have a long commute it's common to see these miniaturized books on the train, complete with a paper book cover. Since spring I've been spending my short subway commute slowly reading the stories and enjoying the fact that while I don't know every single word, I know the vast majority of them and I can understand the unknown vocabulary in the story from context. It's these little moments of linguistic clarity that make all the flashcards and grammar points of language learning so worthwhile, and after a difficult day of academic discussion in Japanese, when my confidence is shaken, I can turn to my small book to remind myself of how far I have come and how much I enjoy the Japanese language.

Everyday life 日常生活

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Today was just a regular day of class and reading, so some photos of everyday life are in order. Above is the view from the IUC break area, where I often sit to eat lunch. A few couches line the hallway, but this view is from the area near the refrigerator, and remains a bit cooler during the day. The Pacifico building (where we are housed) is in the foreground, and the bushes are on the IUC veranda. The bay is in the background.

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Also near the refrigerator is the Office Gilco (above). The drawers are stocked with snacks (think potato chips and cookies) all priced at one hundred yen. It works on the honor system (!), so just drop a 100 yen coin in the frogs mouth and take your snack of choice from the drawer.
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Every day I commute through Sakuragicho station on the Yokohama subway. It's generally pretty crowded in the morning, but this term I come home in the early afternoon, so it's off peak time.

Monday 月曜日

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Just a routine Monday, so I thought I'd share a photo of the view down our street as seen from the balcony.

Motomachi 元町

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Aiko's visit continued today and after having a leisurely brunch at home we ventured out in the rain to Motomachi where we browsed the upscale shops in the area. We had a late afternoon meal of light sandwiches at Pompadour before walking around Chukagai (Chinatown) and ending up at the Kannai Starbucks where we visited before she had to leave to catch her train back to Himeji. I have lots of lovely photos on my camera, but I need to finish up an article before bed, so a quick cell phone photo of the shopping street at Motomachi will have to do.

Kamakura Coast 鎌倉海岸

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Busy day.... our friend Aiko is up from Himeji for a visit, so we spent the afternoon in Kamakura visiting shrines and temples and relaxing on the beach in the early evening (above). Good times :)

Really...

National Archives and Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery 国立公文書館と聖徳記念絵画館

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This has turned out to be a very exciting week to begin my everyday blogging.

My day started out by meeting friends at Yokohama Station early this morning so we could head up to Tokyo for a joint Art History and History class field trip to the National Archives (above). The weather today was warm but rainy and windy, the kind of day when the train cars have foggy windows from all the humidity. Yuk. At the archive, I tried a variety of searches and came up with two documents that may be helpful for my current project. While I'm not sure how useful the documents will be, I spent the 120 yen (about $1.50 for 4 pages) to print out the digitized documents while I had the opportunity.

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While I was in Tokyo, I decided to split off from my classmates for the afternoon and visit the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery (above and below). The gallery contains 80 large paintings illustrating the life of the Meiji Emperor. Half of the works are Nihonga, the other half Yoga. I spent about an hour and a half looking at the works, during which only a handful of older Japanese ladies came and went. Usually Japanese museums are very crowded, so it was a pleasant treat to have the galleries to myself. As a bonus, the museum also contained the skeleton and taxidermied remains of the Emperor Meiji's favorite horse! The gallery is located on the grounds of the Meiji Jingu Gaien, best known for it's sports complex. Below are some of the azaleas that are currently blooming all over Yokohama and Tokyo, the gallery is visible in the background.

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I headed back to home via Shinjuku, and stopped briefly to capture the rainwater pooling on a railing at Yokohama Station.

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Yokohama Art Museum 横浜美術館

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Only half of my classmates attended art history class today, so instead of the usual seminar-style discussion on an article (all in Japanese of course), Kushida sensei took us to the Yokohama Art Museum to see the Pompei exhibition. This was my third time at the museum, I saw a French painting exhibition last summer and, "Dai-Kai-Ko: Art of the Period of the Opening of the Port of Yokohama, from Tokugawa to Meiji" last fall. Pompei, while showing art completely outside of my area of research, had some lovely sculptures, mosaics, painted works and fascinatingly, a Roman-style marble bath set up in it's entirety, complete with the plumbing structure. Above is a post-exhibit photo of Sara, Frank and Paula outside of the museum. Kushida sensei had to return to work, but as it was Sara's birthday, the rest of us headed to Bubby's for burgers (I abstained) and dessert. I opted for the huge slice of Red Velvet Cake, consuming a week's worth of sugar and probably enough carcinogenic red food coloring for a lifetime. But really, it was worth it for a delicious taste of Americana shared with some great company.
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Lecture 講演

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It's late so, a quick post to fulfill my daily blogging challenge...

After my afternoon session with Otake sensei, where we worked on translating a passage of classical Japanese into modern Japanese, I headed up to Tokyo this evening with three of my IUC friends and classmates to attend the workshop, "Public" and "Private" Interactions with Esoteric Buddhist Art: Transmission, Transformation, and Context, held at Sophia University. The speakers included Cynthea Bogel of University of Washington, Karen Mack of Atomi University (and a KU PhD), and Elizabeth Tinsley, PhD candidate at Otani University. After listening to a great group of speakers, I'm now thinking about the concepts of public and private, and how this applies to my own work in the Meiji period.

I took the above photo walking home from the subway at about 10:30 this evening. After a long and productive day, I'm off to do a little kanji review and reading before bed. お休みなさい！

Blog challenge ブログチャレンジ

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After nearly two years of living in Japan we will be moving back to the U.S. one month from tomorrow. There are many things that I'm excited to return to, but others that I'm very sad to be leaving. In an effort to catalog all the things that make Japanese life so enjoyable, I'm challenging myself to blog something every day for the next month. At times it may not be a long post, or the most exciting post, but now that I've made my challenge public, I feel obligated to stick with it. So here it is, the first in a series.... I'm not sure what kind of flower this is, but it's on a cactus plant near my subway station and it's about the size of my hand. If you can identify it, please let me know!

National Diet Library 国立国会図書館

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Last Tuesday I went to the massive National Diet Library in Tokyo to do some research for my current project. This was my first visit to the library so I was excited and nervous, but thankfully I was accompanied by one of my instructors from the IUC, so I had a bit of assistance in navigating the complexities of the system, and a complex system it was.

The first order of business was to register for a one day user id card using an automated kiosk that asked for my name, address, etc. before spitting out a plastic card. To even get into the library we had to scan our cards at a gate, and then every action within the library required using the card. Before entering we deposited most of our belongings in a coin locker, only bringing wallets, paper, pencil, electronic dictionary, and notes into the library, all contained in a clear plastic bag provided near the entry.

Our first stop was the Modern Political History room, where I was searching for an edict referring to proper women's dress issued by the Meiji Empress. We entered the room, had the librarian scan our cards, and then he assisted us in finding the edict, which was essentially a photocopy of the original late 19th century document (written in classical Japanese) bound together (Japanese style) with a bunch of other similar documents. To obtain a copy of the edict I had to check out the book with my card (for use within the library only), use a computer station to print out a copy request form (with the card), go down to the 1st floor from the 4th, and turn in my copy request form and the book at the copy desk (again scanning the card), then wait for about 10 minutes until my number appeared on a t.v. monitor, return to the copy desk, where they scanned my card yet again, and pay for my copies, which were about 25 cents each. Then I had to return to the special collections room and return the book with another scan of the card.

After this adventure, we sought out a few books on Meiji censorship laws and on the Tomioka Silk Mill. A few of the books were in the open stacks humanities section, but most of them required a request from closed stacks. While we waited for the books to be retrieved we used the computer databases (which required a scan of the user card) to search for a few other books and made a few more copy requests.

Upon leaving the library we inserted our cards into the turn style one last time, retrieving our belongings from the coin lockers near the entrance.

After a few hours of library work I now have more materials to read for my project, and a solid understanding of the library system. This was my first experience conducting research at a national library, and I would be interetsed to compare my experiences in Tokyo with that of another major government research library (like the Library of Congress). All in a rainy afternoon's work.

Parking 駐車

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Japan is a very densely populated nation, and the Yokohama-Tokyo area is the pinnacle of this mass of people. For the purpose of comparison, the population of Japan is just under half of that of the U.S., but the land mass is roughly the same size as California. It's pretty easy to forget this on a daily basis, but sometimes reminders of the value of land here will pop up. Case in point, this parking area in my neighborhood. All of the cars are parked on individual sheets of metal which are attached to the structure with large chains. It seems that there has to be at least one empty space per level so that if one wants to retrieve their car from the third level the other levels can move horizontally like a slide puzzle, allowing the top cars to be lowered to the ground. A few of the apartments in the neighborhood also have multi-level covered parking for bicycles. Amazing.