Another weak
Sunday October 29th
It was raining in the morning. I was set for a long raining day, but it went away. I was trying to go ride my bike. I had to be home in time to go to a friends house on the other side of the city for a BBQ. As my fall riding plans revolved around "having fun" and "riding when I felt like it", I thought it would be fun to do a MTN bike race. The race to be held at the nearby Tama Hills recreation center in a week seemed to be very fun. It was short and my junker single speed MTN bike with no suspension would be a crazy blast to enter.
There would be t-shirts and bbq to follow and I had already made arrangements with my Saturday language student to move the lesson time later in the day to allow me to return home and shower. I just needed to get my application that I was assured by email I would receive. So I went out to the local park on my MTN bike and rode around. I was getting worried though because the application hadn't arrived yet for some reason. The park was packed and the trails were way to slick from the morning rain to get any exercise so I went home with only forty five minutes of riding. I felt down. Cycling is like my freedom and it's always frustrated, it takes a lot of energy for me to develop the positive hopeful attitude sometimes. I was so frustrated by cycling I considered taking a hammer to my bike and destroying it. There just was no possible way to get a decent ride. I felt down and depressed. I cancelled the BBQ and took a nap, cleaned the condominium.
To top it off I have a sinus problem, and I have a gum problem (mom, I know what your thinking, it's being attended to). The gum problem was solved with antibiotics, though still a mystery how it happened. However the sinus problem is horrible and sometimes it feels like someone filled my nose with cement. My nose spray helps when used with rest but when I need to do things that especially require my sinuses like talking, which is my job, my nose just ceases up. I think the gum and sinus may be related, I will see this week when I meet my dentist.
Wednesday November 1st
I got up very early, still in hope that I would receive my application for the bike race, and rode out the door. I went towards Tama hills on my MTN bike though I couldn't get into the recreation center without a permit, I could ride around the area that has an extensive trail network. I eventually got to the Tama river and it was a beautiful day and still only six thirty in the morning. I climbed up past Tama rec center and on to some trails. They were fun and I was amazed at the network of dirt roads and muddy large trails out there. I got out to an area of slippery farming trails and rice fields that seemed one hundred miles from Tokyo. I sloughed up a steep hill and ahead was a cat that arched it's back and prepared for attack, until it saw me closer and realized "man, this things big, screw it". Then hoofing it up another hill I ran right into a huge spider web with a huge yellow and black spider. I had this experience last month and I had to get the spider off my bike with a large branch. This time I tried to duck and almost strained my neck. I decided that further adventures would have to wait until December when the weather is colder and spiders die. I returned on the train hefting my twenty seven pound beast of a bike back home and in time for my dentist appointment. My teeth were sterile clean perfect according to my hygenist which leaves the question, why did I get a gum infection? My breathing was still labored and it was friken annoying. I have my main dentist checking out my teeth and sinus this Friday.
Thursday November 2nd
I went to Kokyo, the Imperial Palace where the cyclist go for morning training. However I was spent from the previous days madness. I didn't have motivation and felt sore. My nose cleared up with the effort though. I had my Thursday morning lesson with Matsumoto San. Work went smoothly and I was able to talk without sinus hell. Tomorrow will be a day off.
Friday November 3rd. A national holiday called "culture day".
Yoshiko (Jesus I'm typing this now with a sinus ache) and I went out of town, not really sure where, just some attractive place to take a walk. We headed out towards Yamanashi Prefecture and after an hour and a half we stopped in Otsuki. We ate some interesting local cuisine; these huge fat noodles, like chow fun in a stew broth. Afterward we started following a hiking course that was laid out on a tourist map. The course was directly along Koshu Kaido highway, so it was like walking down a busy road, with no sidewalk of course. Finally it turned off and we walked under the freeway, again not too glamorous but at least we got to walk on a path away from traffic. We saw another guy ahead taking the same route and followed him. He started going up a hill and we followed. We passed over the freeway and he stopped to look a the cars and we kept walking. The hill kept going up. We here hesitant because we didn't know where it was going. We stopped at a convenience store and Yoshiko asked the owner about the road. He said it ends up at the highest point in the area and it takes cars one hour to reach it. We decided to keep walking and see how far we could get since there was a bus and we could always take it to get back. We were walking ever upward past small neighborhoods of older houses with properties that were clean and stored their garbage correctly. Everyone had a little farm or even a bigger farm and were tilling or picking on the beautiful fall day.
Leaves turning color is usually a sign to Tokyo people to get out of town and crowd the roadsides to take pictures. The red leaf viewing time of year can cause countryside roads endless lines of cars with folks peering our with their cameras. But not our road. It was virtually empty and quiet. As the homes thinned out I caught the site of a real wild monkey trying to get something from a farm. He ran when he saw us and darted through the trees, wow. Then we saw a family of pheasants, very beautiful colors. As the road kicked up you could see the gorge below held a river that cascades down rocks through the yellow and red leaf trees. Eventually all the homes went away and it became a park road. We continued to scale upward, there was no let up in the grade. It was beautiful and almost all to ourselves. We really lucked out and had made a great discovery. We caught the bus back down the road and all the way back to the station. We took the super express that was only an hour from Shinjuku. Home safe. We treated ourselves to a huge dinner, ironically for culture day we went to El Torrito, the only Mexican restaurant available.
Saturday, November 4th.
This was to be the day I would race my MTN bike, but the guy who initiated my interest by inviting me never came through... psyche! I couldn't attend the race without an invitation from an enlisted member of the Air Force and the guy flaked. I guess this particular virulent form of flakiness is new to me; people who actually initiate the event and then don't come through, very befuddling. Flakiness is one of the themes that life has laid down for me. Sometimes I think there's someone who gets endless joy in watching how I handle flakes. I guess I need to realize that most people won't help me with even the most casual of undertakings, even if the say they will. So this morning I knew that I needed to "have fun", but I wasn't willing to put the energy into packing up my MTN bike, taking the train and doing what I had done on Wednesday, I had such good outdoor experiences Wednesday and Friday I didn't want to push my luck. So I was left with the old option of going to Kokyo. I didn't deserve such good luck but Conneco San showed up. He's a great cyclist who is in his top form for the year as he is readying himself for the tour of Okinawa. 200 Kilometers of hanging on to the pros and hoping the Sag Wagon doesn't sweep you up. Last year he petered out on the endless leg breaking rollers in the rain. This year he's in even better form and has dropped more weight, looking lean and mean on his new Time VRX. When he rides Kokyo he stops at all the lights, which kind of sucks, but I found someone to play bikes with and I wasn't about to ride away from him. So I played his game of sprinting until we hit a red light, then sprinting again. For all of Conneco san's fitness I still have a bigger turn of speed and knew there was no where on the course he could get away from me. All the little intervals hurt my legs, however I easily outsprinted him on the last hill.
(Staying low and off the front at the Oi Futo race last spring)
As we were waiting for the other riders to get in, Conneco san asked my advice on positioning and posture on the bike. I consider Conneco San the superior rider and was surprised he would ask me anything. But maybe that's why he's better; he's always looking to improve and when he sees something done a certain way he wants to know how. I do have a good aerodynamic posture on the bike that I developed since coming to Tokyo. I'm good a keeping my upper body still and low while peddling. I've made vast improvements on reducing straining my back or neck since riding the roads in Japan. Strangely I've almost completely stopped stretching or doing push ups and sit ups, which was a morning ritual for me in California. I probably wasn't doing it right so not doing it at all has proven to be better. After coming home I did chores and went to see my student, Mister Kida. We always do our lesson at Excelsior Cafe in Shinjuku in the basement, non smoking floor. Almost all cafes in Tokyo are smoking except Starbucks, which has become wildly popular in due part to it's non smoking policy. Other cafes have followed suit and some like excelsior have a complete non smoking floor. Quite often we get a seat at the bottom of the staircase. Due to many clientele sporting the newest, shortest mini skirts an interesting distraction is revealed. I would say a good one third of the time you can tell if it's Dior, Calvin Cline or some budget panty brand. Kida San has noticed my wandering gaze but doesn't seem to know why. Strangely it is Kida san who chooses where we sit. After our lesson I met with Yoshiko and we went to Shinagawa to the Hara Museum of modern art.
The building for the museum is an Old Modernist mansion and really cool looking. The exhibits are usually quite good and Yoshiko decided to become a member so we can also enjoy the openings and special events. Basically if you go five times a year the membership pays for it self. The exhibition was pretty bad this time. The weather was nice though so we did a city walk and got lost in Shinagawa among the wealthy homes. Eventually we found our way to Meguro and had sushi for dinner. My legs were hurting for sure now but at least my nose behaved.
Sunday, November 5th
Yoshiko was planning another escape out of town for a walk. I figured I didn't have much time to ride my bike and I almost didn't ride anyway. I really didn't want to do the same thing again. I had to be back home in a couple hours so I decided to join some group that I've seen going around Tokyo on Sunday mornings though I knew I could kick their collective butts I thought of the motivation as being social and fun ride so as to ignore the fact I train on the same roads almost every day, around and around. I got to the Meiji oval course and sure enough a small group was coming and starting to go around. They were doing 33 kph. Okay for a warm up lap on the flat road. I was behind a rider who seemed about 15 years old with pencil thin legs and wearing track pants over his tights. There was another dude, a big guy riding a De Rosa white carbon fiber frame with Campagolo Bora wheels, I estimated at around 10,000 bucks of rolling hardware. As the speed stayed steady riders rolled off the paceline and I finally took my turn. I did 36 kph then 37 and looked back to see that there was a rider hanging on. I was content to do my speed so when he came around at over 40 I was a bit surprised, then he burned out and couldn't even stay on my wheel. I slowed down and he caught up. We spoke in English and he wanted me to join his group. I figured why not, I wasn't getting exercise but at least I was being useful socially. I met his group. The teenager is not a teenager but a very small guy. The De Rosa guy is a Buddhist Monk. The two other guys were only a bit less interesting. They were going to ride Kokyo and asked me if I'd ever rode there. Hah, funny. So we went, and then I got distracted by another group of riders I knew and tried to follow them. They were going even slower so I went back to Kokyo to look for my new friends but they were not even there. Perhaps they only did one lap and left but in any case they were gone. I saw one rider working hard but then I noticed the time and broke off and headed home.
(Yoshiko getting directions at a arty cafe)
When I got home Yoshiko had a change of plans so my morning ride could have been much better. Flaked on again, by my own wife? But Yoshiko had a good new plan. We would go to Yanaka to check out the art galleries. Yanaka... Why the f@$% don't I live in Yanaka. It's easily the best part of the city of Tokyo. Yanaka is in Taito city nestled in next to Ueno and it's historical museum sector and huge public park and Bunkyo with it's traditional neighborhoods. Because of it's closeness to the Tokyo college of art and it's plethora of ancient graveyards, shrines and traditional homes Yanaka is the closest thing to San Francisco in Tokyo. There are art galleries, lots of traditional and NICE modern architecture, strange museums and interesting cafes. Instead of tearing down old commercial properties they are converted into art spaces and public points of interest. They actually make things to encourage culture and art... I mean wow WOW, is this the same Tokyo that seems run by Mafioso? Ripping down old neighborhoods and propping up towering office buildings that are half filled but since they are government owned the revenue is negligible. I've been living in Shinjuku too long.
(Home of a once active local artist now used for installation work by local college art students)
We went for a very long walk and visited our favorite gallery that is a converted warehouse space. The art wasn't too brilliant this time but it's a spacious and interesting place to go any time. Yoshiko started talking to one of the proprietors of the gallery in Japanese. After we left she told me that there are slots for next year. A two week show costs about a 1000 bucks but you get the whole space. Yoshiko who is the closest thing to an agent for me thinks I should have a show there. What to show? All I've been doing is sketches for the last three years. I have some larger pieces but not enough to compliment the large white walls of the space. I've been thinking of expanding my riding the train drawings to large size by using a projector, but I don't know. It would be good to have something to work towards.
I haven't really cared about my art as a product for about a year or so. For the last seven months I've been into this "experience" concept. It's kind of about how we experience our environment through habituating over certain memory/ emotion triggers; so we sort of see something that is in reference to some other experience. To see our environment without these references I think is part of these train drawings. I actually got to the point where I would only draw what I see, when he/ she moved or got off the train I simply drew that different angle or picked up where I left off with a different body. I stopped caring about what it looked like. Though I was pretty happy with some results I guess it's not dramatically powerful imagination work that I have done before. I didn't really care because I just wanted that trigger-less experience. So here I am with a pile of stuff I kind of like, and have been posting to my web site, and little else to show for the last year and a half. My friends are always approving and encouraging me, people seem respectful of what I do, so it's cool. But there's a lot of artists out there and I like my teaching work enough to not do design or stupid illustration jobs just to tell everyone, "I'm an artist". No, but I would love to be a pro artist and make enough money so Yoshiko could do whatever she wanted, even if it was having a baby. So if Yoshiko can help me be successful it's the least I can do to try, so I'll do the show and pay the outrageous fee. At least it's a nice space.
Yanaka was a great experience as many old homes were tranformed into public art installation spaces for the weekend. Then a walk to nearby Ueno through some old graveyards. We stopped for drinks at attractive children's library. A large roman revival building from the 1930's that withstood the attack of "B-san", (B-52 bomber). I even dealt with the screaming children and relaxed in the pristine fall weather, the best we've had all year. Okay... What's the deal with kids? Yeah, they're my job, but what do I know? If I have one of my own then I'll see, right? I've been working with kids for twelve years, I can't stand the discomfort of helplessly watching their discomfort, the feeling I get when playing with them that at any moment an uncomfortable situation will occur. When they cry like they just seen their parents get shot because they couldn't stay up late, man... Yeah, I'm sure I did it too, so what, But if Yoshiko wants a kid, that's cool. One thing I've noticed is that Japanese kids are more independent and civil than American kids.
(This wins for longest institution name in Tokyo)
We walked out of Ueno towards Ochanomizu over the bridge that spans the river and the train and the road and the lush green embankment with one of the best views of Tokyo/ Akihabra you can get. We went home and had a great teppan dinner in Ookubo. The Korean pancake was to die for.
Thanks for reading.
It was raining in the morning. I was set for a long raining day, but it went away. I was trying to go ride my bike. I had to be home in time to go to a friends house on the other side of the city for a BBQ. As my fall riding plans revolved around "having fun" and "riding when I felt like it", I thought it would be fun to do a MTN bike race. The race to be held at the nearby Tama Hills recreation center in a week seemed to be very fun. It was short and my junker single speed MTN bike with no suspension would be a crazy blast to enter.
There would be t-shirts and bbq to follow and I had already made arrangements with my Saturday language student to move the lesson time later in the day to allow me to return home and shower. I just needed to get my application that I was assured by email I would receive. So I went out to the local park on my MTN bike and rode around. I was getting worried though because the application hadn't arrived yet for some reason. The park was packed and the trails were way to slick from the morning rain to get any exercise so I went home with only forty five minutes of riding. I felt down. Cycling is like my freedom and it's always frustrated, it takes a lot of energy for me to develop the positive hopeful attitude sometimes. I was so frustrated by cycling I considered taking a hammer to my bike and destroying it. There just was no possible way to get a decent ride. I felt down and depressed. I cancelled the BBQ and took a nap, cleaned the condominium.
To top it off I have a sinus problem, and I have a gum problem (mom, I know what your thinking, it's being attended to). The gum problem was solved with antibiotics, though still a mystery how it happened. However the sinus problem is horrible and sometimes it feels like someone filled my nose with cement. My nose spray helps when used with rest but when I need to do things that especially require my sinuses like talking, which is my job, my nose just ceases up. I think the gum and sinus may be related, I will see this week when I meet my dentist.
Wednesday November 1st
I got up very early, still in hope that I would receive my application for the bike race, and rode out the door. I went towards Tama hills on my MTN bike though I couldn't get into the recreation center without a permit, I could ride around the area that has an extensive trail network. I eventually got to the Tama river and it was a beautiful day and still only six thirty in the morning. I climbed up past Tama rec center and on to some trails. They were fun and I was amazed at the network of dirt roads and muddy large trails out there. I got out to an area of slippery farming trails and rice fields that seemed one hundred miles from Tokyo. I sloughed up a steep hill and ahead was a cat that arched it's back and prepared for attack, until it saw me closer and realized "man, this things big, screw it". Then hoofing it up another hill I ran right into a huge spider web with a huge yellow and black spider. I had this experience last month and I had to get the spider off my bike with a large branch. This time I tried to duck and almost strained my neck. I decided that further adventures would have to wait until December when the weather is colder and spiders die. I returned on the train hefting my twenty seven pound beast of a bike back home and in time for my dentist appointment. My teeth were sterile clean perfect according to my hygenist which leaves the question, why did I get a gum infection? My breathing was still labored and it was friken annoying. I have my main dentist checking out my teeth and sinus this Friday.
Thursday November 2nd
I went to Kokyo, the Imperial Palace where the cyclist go for morning training. However I was spent from the previous days madness. I didn't have motivation and felt sore. My nose cleared up with the effort though. I had my Thursday morning lesson with Matsumoto San. Work went smoothly and I was able to talk without sinus hell. Tomorrow will be a day off.
Friday November 3rd. A national holiday called "culture day".
Yoshiko (Jesus I'm typing this now with a sinus ache) and I went out of town, not really sure where, just some attractive place to take a walk. We headed out towards Yamanashi Prefecture and after an hour and a half we stopped in Otsuki. We ate some interesting local cuisine; these huge fat noodles, like chow fun in a stew broth. Afterward we started following a hiking course that was laid out on a tourist map. The course was directly along Koshu Kaido highway, so it was like walking down a busy road, with no sidewalk of course. Finally it turned off and we walked under the freeway, again not too glamorous but at least we got to walk on a path away from traffic. We saw another guy ahead taking the same route and followed him. He started going up a hill and we followed. We passed over the freeway and he stopped to look a the cars and we kept walking. The hill kept going up. We here hesitant because we didn't know where it was going. We stopped at a convenience store and Yoshiko asked the owner about the road. He said it ends up at the highest point in the area and it takes cars one hour to reach it. We decided to keep walking and see how far we could get since there was a bus and we could always take it to get back. We were walking ever upward past small neighborhoods of older houses with properties that were clean and stored their garbage correctly. Everyone had a little farm or even a bigger farm and were tilling or picking on the beautiful fall day.
Leaves turning color is usually a sign to Tokyo people to get out of town and crowd the roadsides to take pictures. The red leaf viewing time of year can cause countryside roads endless lines of cars with folks peering our with their cameras. But not our road. It was virtually empty and quiet. As the homes thinned out I caught the site of a real wild monkey trying to get something from a farm. He ran when he saw us and darted through the trees, wow. Then we saw a family of pheasants, very beautiful colors. As the road kicked up you could see the gorge below held a river that cascades down rocks through the yellow and red leaf trees. Eventually all the homes went away and it became a park road. We continued to scale upward, there was no let up in the grade. It was beautiful and almost all to ourselves. We really lucked out and had made a great discovery. We caught the bus back down the road and all the way back to the station. We took the super express that was only an hour from Shinjuku. Home safe. We treated ourselves to a huge dinner, ironically for culture day we went to El Torrito, the only Mexican restaurant available.
Saturday, November 4th.
This was to be the day I would race my MTN bike, but the guy who initiated my interest by inviting me never came through... psyche! I couldn't attend the race without an invitation from an enlisted member of the Air Force and the guy flaked. I guess this particular virulent form of flakiness is new to me; people who actually initiate the event and then don't come through, very befuddling. Flakiness is one of the themes that life has laid down for me. Sometimes I think there's someone who gets endless joy in watching how I handle flakes. I guess I need to realize that most people won't help me with even the most casual of undertakings, even if the say they will. So this morning I knew that I needed to "have fun", but I wasn't willing to put the energy into packing up my MTN bike, taking the train and doing what I had done on Wednesday, I had such good outdoor experiences Wednesday and Friday I didn't want to push my luck. So I was left with the old option of going to Kokyo. I didn't deserve such good luck but Conneco San showed up. He's a great cyclist who is in his top form for the year as he is readying himself for the tour of Okinawa. 200 Kilometers of hanging on to the pros and hoping the Sag Wagon doesn't sweep you up. Last year he petered out on the endless leg breaking rollers in the rain. This year he's in even better form and has dropped more weight, looking lean and mean on his new Time VRX. When he rides Kokyo he stops at all the lights, which kind of sucks, but I found someone to play bikes with and I wasn't about to ride away from him. So I played his game of sprinting until we hit a red light, then sprinting again. For all of Conneco san's fitness I still have a bigger turn of speed and knew there was no where on the course he could get away from me. All the little intervals hurt my legs, however I easily outsprinted him on the last hill.
(Staying low and off the front at the Oi Futo race last spring)
As we were waiting for the other riders to get in, Conneco san asked my advice on positioning and posture on the bike. I consider Conneco San the superior rider and was surprised he would ask me anything. But maybe that's why he's better; he's always looking to improve and when he sees something done a certain way he wants to know how. I do have a good aerodynamic posture on the bike that I developed since coming to Tokyo. I'm good a keeping my upper body still and low while peddling. I've made vast improvements on reducing straining my back or neck since riding the roads in Japan. Strangely I've almost completely stopped stretching or doing push ups and sit ups, which was a morning ritual for me in California. I probably wasn't doing it right so not doing it at all has proven to be better. After coming home I did chores and went to see my student, Mister Kida. We always do our lesson at Excelsior Cafe in Shinjuku in the basement, non smoking floor. Almost all cafes in Tokyo are smoking except Starbucks, which has become wildly popular in due part to it's non smoking policy. Other cafes have followed suit and some like excelsior have a complete non smoking floor. Quite often we get a seat at the bottom of the staircase. Due to many clientele sporting the newest, shortest mini skirts an interesting distraction is revealed. I would say a good one third of the time you can tell if it's Dior, Calvin Cline or some budget panty brand. Kida San has noticed my wandering gaze but doesn't seem to know why. Strangely it is Kida san who chooses where we sit. After our lesson I met with Yoshiko and we went to Shinagawa to the Hara Museum of modern art.
The building for the museum is an Old Modernist mansion and really cool looking. The exhibits are usually quite good and Yoshiko decided to become a member so we can also enjoy the openings and special events. Basically if you go five times a year the membership pays for it self. The exhibition was pretty bad this time. The weather was nice though so we did a city walk and got lost in Shinagawa among the wealthy homes. Eventually we found our way to Meguro and had sushi for dinner. My legs were hurting for sure now but at least my nose behaved.
Sunday, November 5th
Yoshiko was planning another escape out of town for a walk. I figured I didn't have much time to ride my bike and I almost didn't ride anyway. I really didn't want to do the same thing again. I had to be back home in a couple hours so I decided to join some group that I've seen going around Tokyo on Sunday mornings though I knew I could kick their collective butts I thought of the motivation as being social and fun ride so as to ignore the fact I train on the same roads almost every day, around and around. I got to the Meiji oval course and sure enough a small group was coming and starting to go around. They were doing 33 kph. Okay for a warm up lap on the flat road. I was behind a rider who seemed about 15 years old with pencil thin legs and wearing track pants over his tights. There was another dude, a big guy riding a De Rosa white carbon fiber frame with Campagolo Bora wheels, I estimated at around 10,000 bucks of rolling hardware. As the speed stayed steady riders rolled off the paceline and I finally took my turn. I did 36 kph then 37 and looked back to see that there was a rider hanging on. I was content to do my speed so when he came around at over 40 I was a bit surprised, then he burned out and couldn't even stay on my wheel. I slowed down and he caught up. We spoke in English and he wanted me to join his group. I figured why not, I wasn't getting exercise but at least I was being useful socially. I met his group. The teenager is not a teenager but a very small guy. The De Rosa guy is a Buddhist Monk. The two other guys were only a bit less interesting. They were going to ride Kokyo and asked me if I'd ever rode there. Hah, funny. So we went, and then I got distracted by another group of riders I knew and tried to follow them. They were going even slower so I went back to Kokyo to look for my new friends but they were not even there. Perhaps they only did one lap and left but in any case they were gone. I saw one rider working hard but then I noticed the time and broke off and headed home.
(Yoshiko getting directions at a arty cafe)
When I got home Yoshiko had a change of plans so my morning ride could have been much better. Flaked on again, by my own wife? But Yoshiko had a good new plan. We would go to Yanaka to check out the art galleries. Yanaka... Why the f@$% don't I live in Yanaka. It's easily the best part of the city of Tokyo. Yanaka is in Taito city nestled in next to Ueno and it's historical museum sector and huge public park and Bunkyo with it's traditional neighborhoods. Because of it's closeness to the Tokyo college of art and it's plethora of ancient graveyards, shrines and traditional homes Yanaka is the closest thing to San Francisco in Tokyo. There are art galleries, lots of traditional and NICE modern architecture, strange museums and interesting cafes. Instead of tearing down old commercial properties they are converted into art spaces and public points of interest. They actually make things to encourage culture and art... I mean wow WOW, is this the same Tokyo that seems run by Mafioso? Ripping down old neighborhoods and propping up towering office buildings that are half filled but since they are government owned the revenue is negligible. I've been living in Shinjuku too long.
(Home of a once active local artist now used for installation work by local college art students)
We went for a very long walk and visited our favorite gallery that is a converted warehouse space. The art wasn't too brilliant this time but it's a spacious and interesting place to go any time. Yoshiko started talking to one of the proprietors of the gallery in Japanese. After we left she told me that there are slots for next year. A two week show costs about a 1000 bucks but you get the whole space. Yoshiko who is the closest thing to an agent for me thinks I should have a show there. What to show? All I've been doing is sketches for the last three years. I have some larger pieces but not enough to compliment the large white walls of the space. I've been thinking of expanding my riding the train drawings to large size by using a projector, but I don't know. It would be good to have something to work towards.
I haven't really cared about my art as a product for about a year or so. For the last seven months I've been into this "experience" concept. It's kind of about how we experience our environment through habituating over certain memory/ emotion triggers; so we sort of see something that is in reference to some other experience. To see our environment without these references I think is part of these train drawings. I actually got to the point where I would only draw what I see, when he/ she moved or got off the train I simply drew that different angle or picked up where I left off with a different body. I stopped caring about what it looked like. Though I was pretty happy with some results I guess it's not dramatically powerful imagination work that I have done before. I didn't really care because I just wanted that trigger-less experience. So here I am with a pile of stuff I kind of like, and have been posting to my web site, and little else to show for the last year and a half. My friends are always approving and encouraging me, people seem respectful of what I do, so it's cool. But there's a lot of artists out there and I like my teaching work enough to not do design or stupid illustration jobs just to tell everyone, "I'm an artist". No, but I would love to be a pro artist and make enough money so Yoshiko could do whatever she wanted, even if it was having a baby. So if Yoshiko can help me be successful it's the least I can do to try, so I'll do the show and pay the outrageous fee. At least it's a nice space.
Yanaka was a great experience as many old homes were tranformed into public art installation spaces for the weekend. Then a walk to nearby Ueno through some old graveyards. We stopped for drinks at attractive children's library. A large roman revival building from the 1930's that withstood the attack of "B-san", (B-52 bomber). I even dealt with the screaming children and relaxed in the pristine fall weather, the best we've had all year. Okay... What's the deal with kids? Yeah, they're my job, but what do I know? If I have one of my own then I'll see, right? I've been working with kids for twelve years, I can't stand the discomfort of helplessly watching their discomfort, the feeling I get when playing with them that at any moment an uncomfortable situation will occur. When they cry like they just seen their parents get shot because they couldn't stay up late, man... Yeah, I'm sure I did it too, so what, But if Yoshiko wants a kid, that's cool. One thing I've noticed is that Japanese kids are more independent and civil than American kids.
(This wins for longest institution name in Tokyo)
We walked out of Ueno towards Ochanomizu over the bridge that spans the river and the train and the road and the lush green embankment with one of the best views of Tokyo/ Akihabra you can get. We went home and had a great teppan dinner in Ookubo. The Korean pancake was to die for.
Thanks for reading.
posted by lyle Nisenholz at 12:46 AM
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