okaiya kazurabashi, shikoku japan

our plans were contingent on the weather because with no working waterproof tent it's sometimes better to go home then to be waterlogged. on tuesday the weather surprisingly looked great, so we hit the road and drove to the Iya Valley (a famous mountain region where the Heike Clan ranaway and hid from the Genji clan).

in the Iya Valley there are some famous vine bridges (kazura-bashi). so in the spirit of indiana jones, i was up to the challenge. apparently the bridges are big tourist joints (hard to get to!). so japan has started building huge platforms next to the bridge in order to bring in tourism. awsome (read: not awesome).

the bridge itself was meh. it was viney and all, but you could see the wires and cable that were actually holding it up. granted, it's a huge liability to sent people up on a shifty vine bridge that could break, but it still ripped it of its hardcoreness. maybe i'll have to go to africa or something to get a real, scary vine bridge. but these were fun enough.

after the vine bridges we went further into the valley to find a house, rather famous to the JET community. it's called the chiiori house.

foreigners playing japan
the chiiori project is a house that was originally owned by alex kerr, a famous author on Japan - the only foreigner to receive the japanese "pulitzer". but now it is co-owned by another guy as well. the goal of the chiiori project (stated on their website much more clearly) is to revive japanese culture since it's being paved over with concrete. they've restored a 300~400 year old japanese style house with a thatch roof. the inside is darkened by the smoke of the open stove that sits on the floor, a fire pit for the family. it really brings out a beautiful aesthetic, dark insides and a hickory smoked bamboo trusses. the house is beautiful.

outside are the gardens that are grown to feed the project and its visitors (but due to lack of land and abundance of guests they must buy goods from the grocery store). the chickens are outside, they make eggs. i fed them once. the dog, called jackie-chan, is living out there as well. there's a natural porch with a table that looks out over the valley (the view is obscured by trees).

i would have taken more pictures but my camera ran out of batteries. d'oh. but never fear pictures exist.

one of the first guys we met, a guest there, introduced himself as Matthias Ley a photographer for TIME magazine. he flashed us a TIME magazine and i believed him. he had zillions of cameras too, that helped support his case. i talked with this guy a lot about photography in order to improve my own photographic abilities. this guy is hardcore tho... he's taken pictures of japanese mafia members and he told me the story of how he got into "the lair". quite a guy.

alls was norm until the evening after we ate dinner around the pit, one of the staff members - a girl from England - got her koto out and started playing for us. the softly lit, dark room filled by the sounds of the koto is an image that will probably remain in my mind for the rest of my life. if it doesn't, i've written it here.

it was at that moment that my love for japan was restored. the life of the culture. the beauty. it struck a chord in my soul. at the risk of sounding sappy, i really needed to witness that. moreso, it was the fact that foreigners were "playing japan", imitating its culture and in a lot of ways, saving it by preserving it. maybe it was my pride that said "we do it better". but moreso, i think it was the serenity that unearthed my heart.

yesterday i went out and bought japanese decorations for my house. i'm tempted to only eat sushi for every meal. bamboo is my friend.

so what am i thinking? maybe after JET i might join the Chiiori Project for a few months (not for winter!) and live rustically in Japan. the place reminded me a lot of my Uncle Tom's (cabin) in Colorado... high atop the mountains, you must either kill or grow your food (in thier case kill, in Chiiori's case grow). i think it'd teach me a lot about living. i've wanted to do something like that for quite awhile now. so maybe that's what i'll do... who knows...

the end.

maintenance report: if you haven't been to the photoblog recently, i've updated the pictures on it (not the comments yet) and it's more or less all of the pictures i have taken that i care to share. i've also updated the "about" and "contact info" sections on the side. enjoy. also, more writings coming!! i've got what feels like zillions of stories and poems. yeah!

i think the world is ending. the rice is already yellow and laying down on itself which means that it's done and ready for harvest. this is nearly a month earlier than usual. trees and their leaves are already turning color. we are on the brink of a global thermonuclear meltown. dogs sleeping with cats! do you believe in God, Ray? i do. and i like Jesus' style. i should have never watched Day After Tomorrow...

more on the world ending later....

so on sunday i took off with one of my friends, luella from new zeland, for a three night four day vacation and we went to the wonderful land of Shikoku - it's one of the main islands of japan and contains four prefectures. perty big place.

got to the southern side pretty late mostly because i needed to pee a lot and stop in almost every convenience store in town (they don't have mountain dew in 1 liter bottles and no sunflower seeds!).

our plan was simple. take a tent and camp on the beach and enjoy vacation. so we drove. and arrived at a beach that loosly translated was "SEE LIVING BEACH TOWN - SURFER BEACH". and that's exactly what it was. it was about a kilometer of beach with zillions of surfers cramming in the last waves before night fell. we parked illegally and got in the water as quick as possible it was warm and nice.

how'd we find this beach. . . we opened up the map and followed it until the little surfer icon. that was awesome.

so there was a hurricane last week that hit the area hard and lot of people died because of landslides. the beach was showing the results of that. trash and debris sweeped up. the water was warm and ample.

after our swim, we went to the conbini to round up some dinner. got back to the illegal campsite and set up our tent and started cooking... enter the rain...

1 night, 1 day of rains
so as dinner was cooking the rain started falling.. sitting under an umbrella we watched, getting soaked (nothing worse than wet sand). then after dinner was finished we crawled into the tent. we'd forgot futons and blankets... so it was tent floor camping with (literally stolen) airplane blankets. passing out was easy but because of the shape-shifting, ridged sand i was waking up every ten minutes. because of the rain, the windows on the tent were zipped up thus amplifying the heat within the tent. about 3AM a rain check was performed and data concluded that puddles of water were forming inside the tent! so we mopped those up with the only towel and waited a few minutes for the next moisture check...

that check confirmed earlier data. we were taking on water. a tent sinking on sand. lordy. so in a split decision the camp was moved to the car and the tent dismantled during a precipitation respite. just after that the skies let loose. the lightning and claps of thunder growning seconds closer until the lightning caused the car to vibrate like an earthquake.

that experience when lightnight strikes when night is so dark and it makes you blind is very mysterious and scary... but beautiful in color.

so then home was now the car and the wet tent was stuffed in the back. the rain didn't let up.

we moved the car and got breakfast from the convenience store around 5AM. we parked and saw the other surfers naked and changing for the day. but the rain still fell. about 6AM it seemed socially acceptable to go surfing. we walked around and found a guy who rented boards and i quickly and anxiously took to the water with my mid-sized board hoping to make Dad proud and bring surfing back to the Rupert legacy....

davey-chan hits the waves
i got my ass kicked! these waves are powerful things. at some points these waves were at least 10ft tall. towering over me as i tried to duck dive my way through. tough. at the end of my first paddle out my arms were thrashed. but i started as best i could! i got pushed around and it was quite a painful day.

after two lengthy tries i called into work around 8AM and told them i wouldn't be coming into work. the rain was pouring down.

then because of lightning an exodus began. we had no idea what the announcements said, but when surfers left the surf, we did too, thinking they might know what's up.

later we went back in the water. i tried again. i did alright. I EVEN STOOD UP! but then i promptly fell down kicking my board out. but i was getting the hang of it! that's the extent of my success. no stories of dropping in on huge Humonga-Cowabunga-From-Down-Undaas, but it was great. and i learned how. i'm just no good at surfing now. but it's definitely something i'd like to start doing as much as possible.

paddling redchest
by the end of the day i had dawned a new indian name, Paddling Redchest because the wax had almost waxed off all my chest hair and my "six pack" was red with actual surfing rash! it hurt. but not till a lot later.

we went to an onsen (hot spring) down the road and I SWeAR! i was hurt. my nipples felt like gigantic blisters. they hurt so bad and i was about to cry. it was quite painful as i crawled into the hot waters. but soothing and relaxing. then a massage chair at the onsen decided to crush my calves with it's bionic power. i got angry.

that night we called a guy and crashed at his house. we were probably a big burden on him, but he was nice about it... but he gave us good ideas for places to travel. off the beaten path stuff... so as we slept under a roof in a dry apartment we decided our plans would be contingent on the typhoon like rains outside....

(more to come later! including: dave meets a TIME photographer, dave gets his Lonely Planet on, famous author's houses, rope bridges, foreigners pretending to be japanese, and dave's romance with japan is rekindled)

DISCLAIMER: no romancing happened on this trip. thanks for your concern. still single and kiss-less since 200x (where x<4, x>1).

so i told you about my car battery. i told you about my bike tire that popped. well... of course i have a story.

continuing my quest to learn how to cook indo-pakistani food i went to my friend Luella's house in Miki-city, about an hour south of here. earlier in the day i snuck away from work, got my car started and drove to the next town where the "cheap" battery store was supposed to be. i got there got the battery waited 30 minutes for them to install. grand total for the battery: 12,915 YEN ($125 USD). there was really nothing i could do. so i bit the bullet because i knew i'd have to make the drive down to Miki.

got to Miki around 6ish and the cooking started. the curry recipie was great! Luella is from New Zealand and is half-Maori. her father is from Fiji and is Indian. thus she knows how to cook that stuff up! and it was good. i even learned how to make roti (it's like a tortilla).

the action happened as i was leavinng. having mastered the art of driving backwards in highschool when mike rice and i wanted to see if driving backwards really moved your odometer backwards (a la ferris buller's day off), i had total confidence when i backed out of my parking spot. i even had total confidence driving backwards down the little driveway of her apartment. then i cut the whell at the APPROPRIATE time and i hear a chukka-chukka-thud and i feel the familiar feeling of falling off a curb...

...but that feeling didn't stop as quickly as it should have. i kept falling backwards and the grinding got louder and then my car was immobilized. i could move neither backwards nor forwards. i drove my car off a three foot retaining wall that jumped out of no where!

i go out of my sideways tilting car and hurried around and saw that my car was pivoting on a retaining wall (pictured above). then my front tire had dropped right into one of the gaijin (foreigner) traps!!! lots of cussing. it was like my car was in a figure four. couldn't move.

sooner or later the neighbors and landlady were out and all conceiving how to get it out. we ended up lifting the front while some guy reversed and my car escaped. the alignment is a little jacked up but it should stay together.

i was scared. i thought how could i possibly get this out? i pictured myself going to jail when the cops came to take my car. like i was unsuitable to drive. mistakes happen i'd try to say, but they wouldn't understand... it was scary.

but i'm thankful for the people who helped me out. the girl JETs who i made a total bafoon out of myself infront of. the japanese ladies who just always had the face like "how could he have possibly done that?" embarassed. but crazy stuff happens.

well, the moral of the story is: i must have done something to offended the local gods of transportation. i don't know what.

the other moral is: bikes are a lot easier to lift than cars. thus i think bike is my preferred mode of transportation (other than train - which would also be tough to lift)...

dekansho matsuri, Supertown-shi

there's nothing better really than a town-wide dance party. the whole town gathers in front of the castle and we all join in dancing together the same dance spiraling inward around this huge stage while the anthem of the festival plays over and over and over for hours. in someways, you could theologically liken it to heaven. but more or less it's the Supertown Dance Party! people go nuts-o. mostly alcohol induced. but at the same time there are graceful old ladies who dance with a smile for hours.

so how did i do? well... less drunk than last year! hip-hip hooray! here's the story....

dude, where's my enkai?
flashback sunday. so we, the ALTs, were supposed to meet our BOE promply at 530pm for an enkai (banquet). we arrive promptly and wonder around. no one is around anywhere. so we ask these people if the BOE is going to meet around here and they say, "The BOE's enkai is tomorrow!" ... max & i just look at eachother and say "uhhh...what the hell?" because we were definitely told it was on Sunday. . . then these guys wave us to come and sit down with them.. and we're like, "uh.... ok." so we sit down and start eating these people's food. they give us drinks too. and since we're making new friends with strangers they keep giving us drinks. at this point, it'd be rude to refuse their drinks... especially if we're stealing their food.

so we were served copius amounts of alcohol. we were told "it's rude to have beer in you cup if someone offers you a drink". this spelled disaster (try it at home with your friends and invite one to five alcoholic friends).

so we made new friends! then we walked across the bridge that goes over the moat - that's right i said, MOAT! - and join in the festivities. it was radical. it's a bit awkward to run into your students after you've had x-number of beers. but hey, it's a story for them.

looking back on my pictures i'm noticing that i took a lot of crap pictures... i think alcohol should have a warning label... do not operate a camera while under the influence.

the gods of transportation against me
so remember when i said that my car died. well... i was riding my bike away from the dekansho and we were going to a restaurant. i went up the driveway and it should have been safe, but i think some metal gutter guards parted and my tires just plummeted hard into a huge gutter (we call them foreigner traps). i figured something broke. but after the restaurant i went to ride my bike home and the tire was flat.

i got a ride home from a friend, but then when i woke up this morning i had the sobering realization that i had no form of transportation... uh oh... that means i'll have to walk to work. so i started out the door.

I WALKED FOR FORTY FIVE EFFING MINUTES! i don't think settlers even walked that much! i totally miscalculated the time tooo. i was like 30 minutes late to work.. no one noticed. it's summer. i do nothing.

dekansho round two!
tonight i dekansho'd again! it was rock and roll per usual. lots of dancing. sno-cones and crepes to boot. saw lots of kids from my school. always great. i'll be walking and i'll hear "ahhH! DEBIDDO!" and i look and there's a friend. yeaaah.

on a lighter note: i don't think i've met as many people as i have met this weekend who are called "pervert" consistantly by their friends. they even refer to themselves as pervert or my favorite "international pervert".

well... that's your super happy fun report from Supertown japan. goodnight everyone!