Monthly Archives: April 2008

38 Special

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persimmon leaves

It’s my birthday today. My Lakers swept the Nuggets and are through to the 2nd round. That’s a nice gift. And I couldn’t ask for better weather. It’s warm and sunny, and there’s a sweet breeze that makes me want to drink cool water. But I’ll settle for a glass of wine on the balcony.

Most birthdays I like to do every day things. My theory is that whatever you do on your birthday is the tone you set for the rest of the year. I have a short list of things I have to do. Dance. Play guitar and sing. Play a flute. Write some poetry, maybe a song. Laugh liberally. Do some gardening. And most satisfying of all, do some deep housecleaning.

Occasionally I’ll throw a party, like the now legendary Red Party that I threw when I hit 30. Thanks to my buddy Gil, who donated his house and his neighbors’ goodwill, over a hundred people showed up, and most of them were dancers or musicians or artists. So it was one big audience participation performance, from flamenco to salsa to tango, culminating in the best jam session of infectious dance music that I’d ever experienced. Everyone had to wear red, bring red wine, and I concocted a never ending stream of sangria from a big box of citrus. That’s the gold standard of birthday parties.

foot bath

I had a much quieter party a few days ago. It was at this cool place in Roppongi, called Fioria Ariablu, that’s essentially a glorified karaoke room. I picked out the course menu and the all you can drink option. The room had a little waterfall that emptied into a warm pool of water underneath the table so we could soak our feet and relax while we ate and sang. Towels were included. I also liked the air ionizer that made us instantly feel good as we entered the room.

At parties, I like to have little activities to get people involved and be creative. That’s my credo: creativity, collaboration, community. I try to practice it whenever I can. So I did stuff like write a haiku for each guest. I had everyone say a word of the day, which Erin combined into one text and reads like a beat riff. Here’s the result:

One birthday in France, eternal friendship and a credenza. Tsukiri cocoon. I love the universe!

I had them bring something from their travels. Others had to guess who it belonged to and what country it was from. And we ended the night with a rousing “We Are the World.” We had so much fun we hung out outside for over an hour just chatting.

bent

Yesterday I also bought myself a gift. A little plant that I haven’t been able to identify. It caught my eye when I went shopping for lavender. T’s first words when she saw it was, “Tasty! I want to eat it!” She also wanted to make tempura out of the tender persimmon leaves that are pictured at the top of the post. In my Oregon garden, I had to deal with gophers, squirrels, crows, slugs, aphids, and mold spores. Now I have to ward off my own wife. But that’s one pest I really don’t mind dealing with. Continue reading →

A Neighborhood of Unentered Doors

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spoonhead

After a discussion about favorite places in Tokyo, one of my students told me about her favorite neighborhood, Nishi Ogikubo. The student, Kyoko, is a super sweet, hardworking, single mother. She has a great funky style. Like once she had a handbag made of Heineken beer cans that was surprisingly chic.

When she learned that I had never been to Nishi Ogikubo, or even heard of it, she excitedly told me of all the cool shops there, and charming cafes. And on the last day of class she gave me this hand-drawn map, with recommended places to visit. That was about 5 months ago and I’ve been itching to go there since.

ogikubo

Yesterday I had a free morning and hopped on the Chuo Line to pay a visit. At first glance it seemed like any other newly renovated local station area: chain restaurants, discount bag stores, pachinko parlors. The map appeared to be separated into 3 main areas. I went to the smallest one first where there was a natural food store, an organic restaurant, and a new age bookstore. Unfortunately, only the food store was open.

So next I went along Fushimi St. By then it was 11am but most of the stores were closed. I noticed that many of the stores were closed on Wednesdays. This is similar to many restaurants in the U.S. that are closed on Mondays. Although in Japan, a neighborhood can decide that day off to be Tuesday, Wednesday, or even Thursday.

Nevertheless, along the side streets there were numerous cafes, most closed. But I got lots of great shots of interesting doors. Nishi Ogikubo definitely has the best collection of intriguing cafes in Tokyo.

Mr. Shallows

Among the few cafes that were open I ventured into Shallow’s Café, which is just out of Kyoko’s map (go to the end of Fushimi St. and turn right). It had been open only two weeks. What drew me in were the displays of 60’s and 70’s rock album covers in the window.

The café concept is to listen to an album from the owner’s collection and drink coffee or eat lunch. I requested something by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. And he pulled out a Stephen Stills solo album that I’d never heard. Awesome! I enjoyed the clean, wood look of the interior, littered with bits of Americana. The owner, who spoke very good English, explained that he wanted to share his collection of music. When I asked him about the name of the café, he explained that his Japanese surname translates to “the shallows of a body of water”.

Also in the neighborhood were many antique shops. North of the station there was a cute street with a great bookstore with lots of children’s books, and folk crafts stores. I found a lot of import goods and furniture that were a fraction of the price in more trendy neighborhoods. I’m definitely going back. But not on a Wednesday. Although, I like the mystery of a neighborhood filled with colorful unentered doors.

Click on any of the pictures to see more from the neighborhood.

Musical Diplomacy

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concertslide7.jpg

Last month, a shocking, unprecedented event occurred. In a large packed hall in Pyongyang, North Korean elites stood and listened to the Star Spangled Banner, in front of the American flag. This event was televised live throughout North Korea. Those of you who’ve been living in a cave, North Korea and the U.S. have been technically at war for over half a century. This has been a half century of the U.S. being demonized as an evil imperial power, in a country where nothing is ever televised live.

This event was also unprecedented because those North Koreans were there to greet the largest contingent of Americans, including 8 Korean-Americans, to be on North Korean soil since the Korean War. Also, the 80 members of the international press that accompanied the Americans were given unusual freedom to film and photograph. And by unusual, I mean that they were allowed to take photos without having them confiscated. It has resulted in shots like the following, an eerily empty subway station, in a scene that looks like a 1930′s movie.

streetslide1.jpg

What I’m describing, of course, was a New York Philharmonic concert, staged in Pyongyang. When I read about this event in the news, I was perplexed. How did this event come to pass? And why? I got the inside story from a panel discussion organized by the Korea Society, which I’ve linked to in this sentence.

The panelists include the philharmonic’s conductor, Lorin Maazel, an orchestra member, a journalist who accompanied the orchestra, a technician who helped set up the live broadcast, and others involved in the trip. The whole thing is worth listening to, as they relay the fascinating process of being contacted by the NK government, organizing the concert, and meeting the North Koreans assigned to handle the musical invasion force.

Despite some criticism that the orchestra was used as a propaganda ploy by NK, all of the panelists agreed that this was a goodwill gesture by NK to thaw relations between them and the U.S. This kind of foreign relations strategy was used between the U.S. and China through ping-pong diplomacy. And there are other examples of American orchestras playing in China and the Soviet Union.

The good faith effort was illustrated by the North Koreans going out of their way to accommodate the philharmonic. Essentially, there weren’t hard fought negotiations. Mr. Maazel told them what a NY Philharmonic concert would require to happen and what the program would consist of. It included the usual inclusion of the U.S. flag and playing the U.S. anthem at the beginning for the concert. A theater was retrofitted to NY Philharmonic specifications. The orchestra chose the pieces to be played. And their final condition that the program be televised live to ordinary Koreans was honored.

Below is a youtube clip of the orchestra playing Arirang, Korea’s most beloved song. I was moved by the brilliant arrangement, performed by one of the world’s best musical ensembles, conducted by a genius musician, under poignant circumstances. The concert has got to be one of the most important musical moments of the decade.

Photos by Chang W. Lee/NY Times

Aliens Invade Tokyo

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floating leaves and glass

The Miraikan, or the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, is located in the Odaiba area of Tokyo. The building is an awesome cavernous glass structure in an ellipsoid shape. It’s filled with light and dangling from the ceiling are large glittering leaves. It reminded me of the International Forum in Yurakucho, another all-glass oval-shaped stunner. But I like the Miraikan better because there is a more intimate feel, with all the floors connected visually.

globe series

The centerpiece of the museum and the building is an enormous electronic globe. The image of the world rotates in real time and it displays things like the current weather and global temperature. You can view it from below in lounge chairs or you can look at it from any of the museums floors. It was mesmerizing and beautiful.

Some highlights of the museum include a real space capsule and a submersible. The most informative display was the picture, name and nationality of every human, dog and monkey who has ventured into space, grouped by year. It was fascinating to see how the Soviets and Americans dominated space travel for a few decades, but now it’s becoming truly multinational, with more Chinese, Japanese and Europeans leaving the atmosphere.

While the permanent exhibits are worth a visit, you shouldn’t miss the special exhibit, The Science of Aliens. The exhibit is separated into four zones. The first one looks at aliens in the public imagination and popular media. For instance, there is an Ewok costume and a scale model of an alien from the Alien movie series. It traces the way we have projected our fears and hopes on imagined extraterrestrials.

The second zone looks at the strange life forms that are on our planet, showing us that an alien could be nothing that we can even imagine. There were samples of life on earth that exist in the most extreme environments, from super hot to bone-crunchingly cold to oxygen-depleted. That was eye-opening.

The third zone took us on a tour of attempts at communication with aliens. It had the complete recordings of Voyager, which we could hear samples of. And the fourth zone had an interactive imagined alien ecosystem. Overall, a comprehensive and totally cool exhibit.

Both the permanent exhibit and the special exhibit are reasonably priced at 500 yen and 350 yen, respectively. It’s a great place for kids. And if you have time you can visit the nearby Maritime Museum, walk around the surrounding park, and shop and dine in the Venus Fort, an indoor mall complex that mimics the interior of a Las Vegas casino. T and I went to the 4 storey game center and went bowling and sang karaoke, sending messages of our own to other worlds.

Photo credits: second photo by T. Funada

Water Poetry 5: The Sijo

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the king's private gazebo

It’s been a few months since I’ve posted anything in the Water Poetry Series. Remarkably, they are the most popular posts on this blog. The concept has been to write a poem about a body of water in a poetry form native to that country. The Free Verse about the San Francisco Bay gets the most hits of any of my posts. The Elizabethan Sonnet about the Thames, the Villanelle about the Seine, and the Haiku about the Tama River are 4th to 6th. I’ve tried to come up with some explanations for their popularity. I mean it’s poetry. Who reads and writes poetry anymore? Yet, apparently people do. And I think it’s a great sign of the state of the world.

In this post, I spotlight the Sijo, a Korean poetry form that traces its roots back over two millennia and had its heyday during the 13th to the 16th Century. Because the sijo is written in three lines it’s compared to the haiku, but the lines are substantially longer, and the content of the poem is much broader and often personal. Traditionally, the sijo is written to be sung aloud which lends it a lyrical quality

So to write a sijo just follow these simple guidelines.

• There are three lines of 14-16 syllables.

• Each line has two separate phrases roughly 6-9 syllables.

• The first line introduces the topic, theme, or situation.

• The second line develops the topic.

• The third line provides a twist, or some kind of surprise

When I visited Seoul two years ago, I hadn’t been there since 1980.  It was an entirely different country than when I had last visited.  It was modern and confident, by then a well-cooked stew of glass, concrete, luxury cars and cocky optimism.

Back in 1980, South Korea was still a developing country.  There was only one kind of sedan on the road, called the Pony.  Children squatted on the street to relieve themselves.  Leathery men carried human waste in buckets balanced on poles.  Few people had flush toilets.  The nation was under martial law.  These are only some of the more extreme images of  poverty that I remember, but Korea was far from the 12th richest country that it is today.

There were many more things that were different.  Among them, I didn’t remember the Han River, the river that cuts through the city, to be so wide.  In fact, it’s 1 mile or 2.2 km wide.  I later found out that the river had been dammed downstream before the 1988 Olympics to fill the riverbanks and allow a more picturesque scenery for tourists, and to control flooding.  Ancient Seoul was originally a walled capital north of the river, with the recently burned-down Namdaemun as its south gate.  Along the river and south of the river were the farmers that supported the city.  Now much of the city’s wealth has gravitated towards the south banks.  The burning of the Great South Gate symbolizes that expansion of the city boundary.

The picture above is not of the Han River.  It’s the Hwangwonjeong pavilion, where the king used to write poetry, and the small pond surrounding it in Gyeongbok Palace.

Before the high priced towers and the catwalk avenues,
Only the servants of the poor lived on the southern banks.
Now ashes of the Great South Gate have settled on its soil.