Saturday, February 26, 2011

Stumped


I had to go to Jimbocho, that part of Tokyo where the streets are lined with bookstores, old and new, and discount sports stores. So I took the opportunity to look in on the stores specializing in woodblock prints. Marlowe, a restaurant not far from our house on the beach, had put out a promotional postcard (above) that looks like a print by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), the awesome woodblock artist. I thought that it was be a very nice thing to have, since it's almost a perfect match for the view from where our house it.

Four owners of four of the slicker shops just looked at me blankly when I showed them the postcard. None of them recognized it, and three of them didn't even bother looking through their inventory. I was about to give up until I went past the little shop that specializes in very old books. I showed the man the card, and he didn't hesitate, "I think that's from the book, The 100 Views of Mt. Fuji."

He spent a few minutes climbing over piles of books and pulled an old one off one of the upper shelves, and started flipping through the pages. And there it was--only something was different. It was the same view but it was split into two vertical prints on facing pages. "I think that image on the card has been manipulated," he said. "I don't think it was ever made as a full size print, so someone must have stuck the two images together to make that." "When?" I asked. "Probably in the post-war period; maybe even more recently," he said. "People have done all kinds of things with old prints and the blocks."

But this was the real thing, and it was beautiful. The colors were brilliant, and the price was scribbled on a piece of cardboard attached to a string: ¥650,000. "How much can you afford," he asked. "Well, not that much." I answered. "We get lower quality ones sometimes," he said, and had his assistant fetch another one. ¥98,000. The page with Standing Rock on it was pretty filthy but still impressive. It doesn't really seem that expensive for a whole book of Hiroshige prints, but I really have to think about this. So I asked him to hold it, while I contemplate it for a few days.

I did get a picture.
What would you do?

Friday, February 18, 2011

Signs of M

After buying all the wood to build the deck, it's good to get back to using leftovers. I stuffed our shed with pieces of wood from the old house, and have been using it for various things like the firewood shed, garden dividers, etc. M wanted a stand for a chalkboard sign at the driveway entrance where she can put various announcements about the aromatherapy salon. Finally got to use some of the wood from the old shelves, and then got into it enough to make a small sign for the gate at the top of the stairs coming up from the beach.
This sign above is one of the floorboards from the old house. It was black and gummy when I first started working on it (while it was still a floor, of course), and after so much sanding and waxing I had a hard time seeing it all go. I still have a number of these floorboards stacked in the shed, waiting for a project.
The first sign we put up a year or so ago is standing up well, though it's getting a bit weather beaten. This piece of wood wasn't from the house, but was washed up on the beach. We used to get a lot of driftwood washing up, but it seems like less these days.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

the parasitic pachyderm

m found this pachyderm hiding in the hills behind the house. There aren't many other animals left there. Lots of squirrels, who've really ripped a lot of the trees to shreds, some raccoons, pheasant, and other birds. Snakes: mamushi, the poisonous ones, which rarely are seen larger than a foot long or so,  and aodaisho, which get considerably larger (I've seen them five or six feet long and as big around as my arm) but are harmless. There's one other poisonous one whose name I can't remember, but its fangs are far back in its mouth, so unless it can really get a grip on a small part of your body--a finger, say--there's not much to worry about. But this dude in the photo is the largest animal I've seen around here, though I think m's got it trained fairly well by now.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

happiness is a warm bench

I don't know the exact provenance of this bench, since it's been in the yard since I first started coming down fifteen years ago, and was still here even after the destruction and construction of the houses. The stands are completely rusted, and the wood is so old that it bends ominously when a heavy person sits on it, but it is that pliability and softness of the wood that makes it extremely comfortable. I decided to drag it down onto the beach in front of the house where it can be of the best use, aimed it directly at the spot across the bay where the sun sets and put up a sign hoping people would use it (and not steal it). Then I also dragged down part of a log and we put some brochures for M's aromatherapy massages in a bamboo basket. People seem to be drawn to it. The other day (a weekday), a guy ended up sitting there for more than two hours, engrossed in his book. That's a good benchmark for how welcoming it is.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Sabori


Sabori is a great word, one that I’ve always liked, though I never realized it could encapsulate a philosophy of life. It basically means truancy, or to play hooky, and that’s just what I did today—took a day off from work for the sole purpose of having a great time doing things as far and as different from the workplace as possible.

My partner in crime was Sangawa-san, who has totally removed any negative nuance from the word, and made a life of it. He lives down the coast, and he runs an outfit called 3knot with his wife out of his home. They do lots of stuff, but it generally is built around the concept of sabori. I mean, when you first walk into their house/shop, the first thing that grabs your eye is a pile of hammocks, not your average accoutrement for a Japanese home. He’s made a life of helping people escape from their daily routines, for such simple activities as climbing the hills, kayaking, even just enjoying campfires on the beach, or searching for a particular mountain herb.
The trail was overgrown but clearly visible when we started.
 Our hooky project today was to find the trail from the Koyasu side of the mountain to Akiya, one that I’ve failed twice to cover when attempting it from the Akiya side. S had a very basic map that someone had drawn—a few curves and one notation marked “field” and “row of large trees”—and that was pretty much it. He had hiked it a few years ago, but about 100 meters into the trail, it was pretty obvious that very few people, if any, had traveled on it for some time.

Very soon it got to be a chore to stay on the trail, thanks to the fallen trees every 3 or 4 meters.
We lost the trail once and just decided to forge ahead. It seemed that every other rotten tree had fallen right smack across our path, so we were constantly either jumping over them or crawling on our hands and knees.  For several hundred meters, we couldn’t even find the space to stand straight.
It was a perfect tree for climbing; the only problem was the limbs stretched straight off the side of the hill, so it was a good 100 feet down if any of the dead branches gave way. Damn, this was like playing hooky 50 years ago.
Then we came out onto a little clearing that had a huge tree growing out over the northern side of the mountain in a desperate attempt to find some sunlight. It was a perfect climbing tree, so we ascended out on the biggest limb and perched there, overlooking the forest and the farms further out, and the horrific housing area on top of the next mountain.
And what a view, even if it was the first cloudy day in a month. If we had bigger balls, I suppose we could have hung the hammock in this tree. Instead, we discussed which branch would be the best support for a deck.
Another bit of a slog to the peak, and we stopped for tea and beancakes that Sangawa-san had brought along. He also had a lightweight hammock that folds out of a tiny bag and we set it up and took turns putting our feet up and discussing the finer points of sabori, and its importance to the future of mankind.
I've got to get one of these hammocks. I can just imagine trekking up here, getting comfortable with a book, and taking a nap. I have to admit when I was stretched out in this, I thought about the office and my colleagues at work . . . for about four and a half seconds.
A bit further on we hit the one map feature, the remains of a farm field (I have a hard time imagining who would have made this hike to care for it), and a stand of huge trees that were lined up like the entrance to a royal garden. Then the trail disappeared in a thick bamboo forest, though I knew we were near the location where I’d lost the trail coming the other way, before we stumbled into the WWII-era anti-aircraft gun placement that I’d found before. The bamboo is so thick that a machete would come in handy. Ten minutes later—maybe three and a half hours after we’d started—we were just above Akiya and home. There's another month or two before the snakes come out, and another three or so before the rainy season, when what's left of this trail will get even more grown over.

This bamboo forest was a mother, maybe 30 yards deep, and there was no way around it. Sangawa-san is only 10 feet away, and I could barely see him. If this was summer and the bamboo was green, it would be almost impossible to get through, but since it was dry, we could just crunch our way through it.
And this is where the "jungle" ends and the trail opens up and starts to wind its way down to our village. You can just make out our house just behind the bare tree on the right.