A perfect sunny day in Osaka, early May

I'm at home, the second day of Golden Week.
Enjoying the not working thing very much, taking time out and trying to rest and, that's all really.
I had wanted to go away, quite desperately, to get away from and at the same time get my head around the crazy events of late. Sadly, plans fell through.

Funny, the last blog attempt (other than uploading photos) ran for 6 months up until I left for Japan. Now here I sit ready to get back to writing, meaning to all this time (but only barely managing to keep up with correspondence, nevermind a blog), and only now beginning when I am a 3 or 4 months away from the possibility of leaving Japan...

So, as I was saying, I'm here at home on a perfect day. For a change I'm happy to be sitting here with nothing pressing to do or nowhere I need to be. Trying to make the most of the time since I'm not going away this weekend. But I feel I should go out, despite my lack of energy for crowds and fear of being a wet blanket. A good friend I've met and traveled with here in this mad country has been asking me to join her in neighbouring Takatsuki for a Jazz Festival. I may just go, likely in the evening after a nap and when the sun is retiring. I'll be going with other people tomorrow, so an evening to stroll through might be nice. The air and exercise will be good, as well as the company, the interesting people, and the festival atmosphere too I suppose.

I have yet to process my decision to leave. I had been puzzling through and wrestling with it for months. It happened about a week ahead of schedule, mid-May being the point of no return. A text message from the Prefectural Advisor at the Board of Ed nudged me onward. So I dropped the bomb Thursday, just ahead of leaving for the Golden Week holiday. I feel lame for doing that, but at least this way I can secure the fact that I'll have a replacement and it will go smoothly for them too.

(That's a whole 'nother thing to tackle later, that someone out there is about to learn that they are coming to Japan to fill my shoes in Osaka - the most coveted of all placements - just as I did a year ago...)

So far I haven't regretted my decision, and since last night I have actually been looking forward to getting home. Make no mistake though, I will miss Japan for the rest of my life and it pains me to think of leaving. Especially now that the weight, the pressure is off. Like a friend said the other night, over a supportive kaiten sushi dinner at the (disappointing) Dragon sushi bar in the Shinsaibashi shotengai: Now I'm free to have this time to do the things I haven't done yet, like taking a 3 month working-holiday kind of thing. She also gave me the perfect analogy after I had described making the decision to leave official. My head's been so noisy, day and night for months, like the tap running at full pressure to fill the bath. Now it's suddenly quiet and steady, like pulling the cork and letting the water slowly drain away... My mind has been quiet, my thoughts don't have the same weight they did. It's nice.

I still have to tell people about my decision. My family, my friends back home, even my friends and acquaintances here. I guess I am trying to come to terms with it before I can field all the reactions and questions from those around me here and across the globe. Not sure what I can say, hard to describe to anyone who's not here with me, going through the same sort of thing. Well I can only hope they trust me and support me.

Well in the mean time, a nap, some sorting of things to send home ahead of me, and getting ready to go out to hear some music and eat some tentacles with plum spirits.

more blossoming trees for chrissake

Well since is such a big freakin' deal, I've added a couple more cherry blossom photos.
This one at the top is in Kyoto on the grounds of the Imperial Palace.
The one below was also taken in the park surrounding the Imperial Palace, but these are peach and plum blossoms.
I just love the expressions the old couple on the bench are wearing.

view from the silver temple

The lovely view of Northern Kyoto from the garden path at Ginkakuji.
Go ahead, click on it. : ) Check out the Zen Garden at the bottom left of the image. The dudes making it worked fast, with mad precision, and in sync so that they came together at the end, perfectly.

(like VIP)

In the beautiful city of Kyoto there is a temple among a great many called Ginkakuji (the Silver Temple). It's not as flashy as Kinkakuji (the Golden Temple), but it's understated and so all the cooler, many people like myself will argue. It lies on the mountainside on the north end of the Philosopher's Walk. The hike uphill is made easier by the distraction of sweets and treats and souvenirs of all varieties, and the delicious smell of roasting tea and rice cakes...
Once inside the Temple grounds, as this photo demonstrates, you will find that there exists some Very Important Moss.
Enough said?

crowds, cameras, and pale pink blooms

The Japanese, more concerned with recording the moment than being in it at times like this, are mad for cherry blossoms. It's an actual madness, I'm convinced. That said, appreciation for nature and remembering to stop and smell the er, blossoms is admirable. Over the first 3 weeks in April, all ages and all manner of people took part in Hanami (cherry blossom viewing parties) that require a lot of eating and drinking under the impossibly pink and fluffy trees.
This photo was also taken at the Osaka Mint. There were a ridiculous amount of people.

night at the mint

During one week every year, the Osaka Mint opens its electrified and barbed-wire gates to allow the public to enter and enjoy the hundreds of stunning cherry blossom trees, the riverside, and countless stalls selling usual festival foods and drinks, (such as octopus tentacle on a stick and alcohol). Going at night is really something because you get to see the place all aglow with lights and lanterns and cell phones. Cherry blossom viewing is a serious, serious thing here.

soap box

Haven't written in a while 'cause of the funk I'm in.
Then I noticed today that my detergent has an "attack style fit."
I'm again realizing how this stuff just gets tuned out after a while. Visual white noise.

tee shaatsu desu

This is one of my favourite nonsense Engrish tees.
For some reason tees with 'decorative English' are really popular with the locals. Seeing this kind of thing is such an everyday occurrence that eventually you don't notice it much anymore, unless it's something that really stands out. Like this one.

a place called home

This is Osaka. I took this from the floating observatory at the Umeda Sky Building, looking northeast towards Kyoto.
I live over there somewhere.

warning sign: smoking

This just makes me want to take up smoking again just to see what happens.

so it never snows in osaka

Yet here we have the 4th or 5th snowfall in 2 weeks. A really freaky winter apparently. It was all melted within a day of course, but surprising and nice for us homesick northern folk.
It caused a lot of trouble though, as they don't have sand or salt or snowplows of any kind, in addition to the complete lack of insulation or even the concept of central heating. The latter is something you'd think they have down, given the horrific price of electricity here.
(This is a narrow view from the landing of my building.)

warning sign: changing table

One of the many weird and wonderful warning signs. This one was most hysterical when it was first pointed out to me. Now it makes me smile a lot, so I'm not sure if it was the moment and the mood or the sign itself.

popping shower

Ice cream comes in all kinds of different flavours here, appealing to the Asian palate. More

interesting that what's in it, is what it's called. This is one of my faves: Popping Shower flavour. Actual ingredients are as yet unknown (pop rocks perhaps, but it's rarely that logical). I'll update once I figure it out.

The most common flavours of sweets are predictable if you're used to Chinese or Japanese food, but offensive to people like my very British friend Philip (of South African descent), who often complains that desserts should not consist of rice, beans and tea. Put in that way, it does sounds kind of funny, especially since the savoury flavours are the same, plus fish.

And yes, it's true, tomato ice cream is pretty gross.

"yellow dots animal"

Here's an example of things being utterly random. (This is going to be a main theme, there's really no escaping it.) In fact, I only took a picture of this because last week had three or four giraffe synchronicities, and it seemed important to document. Seems as good a place as any to start with.

So last Friday's event du jour was the city-wide photo scavenger hunt, one of many Habitat for Humanity fundraisers happening this month in Osaka. (A bunch of the peeps are going to spend spring break in the Philippines building stuff.) Half-hearted and half-assed and annoyed at some of the lame-ass clues, my group of 4 went at it, but we eventually gave up, spending the next hours in an arcade before catching our respective last trains home.

Earlier in the evening, pumped after scoring my tickets to see the Foos, I met the teammates in one of the main department stores in the centre of it all, which has an entire store dedicated to the metrosexual men that dominate the cities here: Hankyu Men's. Imagine Pocky for Men, but like an entire building. Everything is black and white and gray, even the union jack on floor B1 is stripped of its colours. Ok, in any case, rounding the escalators up to the 7th I passed this display on one of the floors. There's not much more to it. Can't shed any light or offer context. Nothing was being sold here. It's a life-size giraffe, looking around a corner, near some elevators and a tinsel curtain. *sigh*

preface

So here we go, taking this photo-hello idea for a test drive. Special thanks to Tom for the right idea, encouragement and prodding required for me to get on this.

Though I'm usually organized all kinds, time management is something I'm poor at, or rather procrastination is my special skill, (shocking I know). Life in Japan also has a unique ability to suck hours out from under your nose. Keeping in touch shouldn't be the stress-bomb it's become, that's kinda backwards. So this project will hopefully help me to keep track of things, keep in touch with my peeps, and hopefully be generally interesting.

In any case, enough, enough. Let's get going. Ikimassho!