A Day in Kyoto [ Japan III ]

One day the four of us go to Kyoto.

I have visited Kyoto before.  It is kind of where to go in Japan, if you have a choice, particularly during cherry-blossom time.   Set among hills, it is home to a variety of interesting temples and shrines, as well as other historical points of interest, and surrounded by natural beauty.  Its beauty saved it.  When the Target Committee placed Kyoto first on the list of potential cities to be destroyed by the first or second atomic bomb, Secretary of War Henry Stimson removed it from the list.  (One account claims Stimson had visited Kyoto before the war; another says Edwin O. Reischauer, a famous authority on Japan, burst into tears at the news, and that Reischauer's superior in Army Intelligence persuaded Stimson to save the city of temples from destruction.)

I have little to add to all that's been written on Kyoto, but a few photographs.   We walked extensively -- from the train station to _________, then along smaller streets, all of them far more crowded than I recalled from decades ago, to Kiyomizu-dera, around its grounds, and ultimately back to the subway, walking faster and faster as rain began pelting us.

Two visitors enjoy Kiyomizu-dera

Kiyomizu-dera is a Buddhist temple from the Heian period.  The place is well over a thousand years old, although the existing buildings date back only to 1633, when Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu (memorable to me as a major figure in the novel Shogun) ordered its restoration.  Not a single nail was used in the construction.
  

Posing by sakura

We see many kimonos.  Most are rented for the day.   Young women rent them as part of an outing to Kyoto to see the sakura.    A far smaller number appear to be high-quality, older kimonos that may be family heirlooms used now only for special occasions.  

A very few women -- including these two, I think -- are "actual geishas" -- whatever that means in this day and age.  They wear the costumes, and the white face-paint, as part of jobs in bars, entertainment, or historic  spots.  When other Japanese see them, they often ask to have their pictures taken with the geisha.







This lady is none of the above, but perhaps just a bit old-fashioned.

Her kimono is older, well-worn, and not at all flashy.

She projects a certain dignity.

This woman is, we realize as s/he draws nearer, not a woman.  It's refreshing that although a few Japanese shoot photographs, as I do, people are not in the least troubled by his cross-dressing, but rather compliment him or express appreciation if they comment at all.    Everyone's having a good time, and so is s/he.

How common it is for a man to appear as a geisha in Kyoto's streets I have no idea.






Random images from Kyoto



An unbeliever . . .



. . . just in case

. . . rings the bell . . .

Actually, posting these three pictures triggers a memory.  Folks were tossing coins up onto the stage, ringing the bell, and making wishes.  One fellow in a wheelchair kept being encouraged to do so by the woman pushing his chair.  It wasn't hard to guess what he might wish for; but each time she gave him the coin, and he tried to toss it, he couldn't manage that.  She'd pick it up and give it to him again.  She tried helping to guide his arm, but that too failed.  Finally I think she tossed it up there and he made his wish.   Sad.  Unless, as of course I hope, his wish came true.





Water for Scofflaws

Sure doesn’t look like the City of Las Cruces will cut off anyone’s water because of traffic violations.

The general threat to do so had generated a firestorm of "Sound-Off" calls, letters to the editor, and e-mails to everyone on the City Council.

The specific threat, in letters to five property owners, quickly led to payment plans with, or full payment by, four scofflaws with a total of thousands of dollars in unpaid tickets.

(Since Mayor Ken Miyagashima had such difficulty pronouncing it at Monday’s Council Meeting, let’s take a moment on the word "scofflaw." Many words derive from a proper name, such as "I’ll xerox that" or "Hand me a kleenex." More come from Latin or Greek or German or French. Others start as some clever remark, get repeated often enough to become common slang, and eventually make the dictionary. Scofflaw was the winning entry in a contest in 1923 in Boston. The contest sought a new word for "a lawless drinker of illegally made or illegally obtained liquor." (Yep, Prohibition was in full force.) Delcevere King, a rich Prohibitionist from nearby Quincy, offered a $200 prize for a word that would "stab the conscience" of the evil alcohol consumers. Two separate contestants submitted "scofflaw," and divided the prize.)

The purported legal basis for the letters was a 1988 ordinance allowing the City to cut off utility service to folks who owed it any money. For the record, the City hasn’t said it’ll send no more threatening letters, but only that it won’t do so before a June 25^th work session. But I’ll eat a copy of the ordinance if the City continues this silliness.

"Sure was dumb," a friend said as we left the council meeting.

Mayor Miyagashima, in a somewhat defensive opening statement, had danced real hard to avoid saying the same thing that directly. He patted himself and the council on the back for responding quickly to a storm of protest; but he didn’t apologize, or speak as frankly as my friend.

I doubt the City would ever really have turned off anyone’s water. Someone must have talked to a City Attorney. Any lawyer -- and most any sensible human being -- would realize you couldn’t risk turning off utilities on a family of seven renting from a scofflaw. What if you turned off the heat for a scofflaw’s spouse and kids during a separation? (A clever fellow angry at his wife might even start racing through certain intersections to run up a dozen tickets as fast as possible. "That’ll show her!")

An attorney might approve letters threatening to turn off utilities. But okaying actual cessation of service? Just too many potential dangers and uncertainties. Could we even be absolutely sure it was legal for the City, as a utility operator, to do something like this that no private utility could do? If someone got hurt, and high-priced trial lawyers were arguing the legal issues at hearings or a trial, the City would spend far more than it had collected, even if it won.

So I’ll speculate that they’d never actually have done it – and I’ll suggest that if their Law Department approved cutting off utilities on scofflaw’s accounts, someone might want to schedule a closed-door work session to discuss personnel. But I’m not quite a licensed attorney in the State of New Mexico, and haven’t researched it, so maybe I should shut up.

Legality aside, the episode was ill-considered.

It scared some scofflaws and netted some money. But at what cost?

A lot of people were and are furious about red-light cameras. The whole idea seems too Big-Brotherish. And unfair: we grew up drinking our fill and speeding like the devil, and the cops were obligated to spot us or chase us. These cameras are as sporting as shining a bright light at a deer so he freezes for an easy shot, instead of showing some skill and accuracy by sneaking up on him. (Personally, I dislike the cameras; but if I were on the Council I’d probably approve their use.)

The utility shut-off angered folks even more. It just ain’t right. If I didn’t finish paying El Paso Electric for a used van I was buying, the utility couldn’t cut off service. Too, public versus private operation of utilities is a question people of different political persuasions argue about sometimes. Why create ammunition for those who say the City should leave such activities to private enterprise?

Citizens’ trust is a valuable commodity. City governments are unwise to squander it. We need to trust that the City is looking out for us; and where it’s in the utility business, we need to know the City is playing fair with us. This clever idea didn’t feel fair to most of us, and undermined that trust.

What hasn’t been said is that the council didn’t know about these letters in advance. Several learned of it when they got the first complaining e-mails, and weren’t happy. On the other hand, none publically disavowed it immediately, so far as I know. None told the City Manager or the public that s/he disapproved. (Miyagashima had even mentioned the possibility publically a couple of months ago.)

I like the folks who run our city. But I’d like ‘em better if they had stepped up at Monday’s meeting (or earlier) and said, "We screwed up here. We’re sorry."
                                                   -30-
[The foregoing column ran in the Las Cruces Sun-News today, Sunday, 13 May.

For readers from outside Doña Ana County: City orf Las Cruces has had, for several years, red-light cameras at a couple of intersections.   They are highly unpopular, although there is some evidence that they decrease the frequency of serious crashes at the intersections in question. 

Recently, the city announced that it would turn off utilities (water and gas) to the homes of flagrant scofflaws -- those with vast numbers of unpaid traffic tickets who have ignored notice by certified mail that they must pay up or else.   The city actually sent out five letters making the threat.  Four resulted in immediate payment or payment plans; the fifth, according to one city councilor, was to someone who'd left the jurisdiction already.  (Another city councilor had told me the fifth was actually to the address of a different property owned by one of the four recipients who agreed to pay.)  In addition, there's been a firestorm of Letters-to-the-Editor and phoned in Sound-Offs -- mostly excoriating the City, but some saying sympathy for scofflaws was fatuous, and they should obey the law or face the consequences. 

We went down to City Hall for Monday's Council meeting, at which there was to be public input on the issue.  There was some, primarily against the City's position, although at least one speaker expressed the "if you break the law you have no complaint about the city trying to collect" view.]  Even before any public input, the City announced that although there was nothing wrong with the policy - that the city officials who came up with it were "doing what they are supposed to do" -- it would be suspended, pending a work session later this month to discuss it.  These remarks, by the Mayor, referenced the storm of  e-mails received by himself and the councilors. 

One suggestion that didn't make it into the column but is worth municipal consideration: at the red-light-camera intersections, add to the traffic signals the count-down system, which would help drivers judge whether or not they can legally make it through the intersection.]

Two Weeks in Osaka [ Japan II ]

We quickly settle in to life with Donaldo and Midori in Osaka.   Going about on bicycles, buses, and a variety of trains, the buses and trains always remarkably on time.  Watching American baseball games over breakfast, particularly if Yu Darvish is pitching.  Lots of laughter among the four of us.  Long hot tubs before bed.
 
Sometimes one or both of us will accompany Donaldo for part of an English conversation class.  Sometimes we wander about on our own in the neighborhood.   Once we all visit Kyoto together, and on another day we visit a special restaurant in Kyoto Prefecture but a good ways from the city itself.  When we travel on trains, Midori negotiates an astonishing array of subways and trains with astonishing precision.  (When we do so alone, we manage, but a lot more slowly and tentatively.) 
We feel good here.   The plethora of bicycles is nice.  The smaller cars.   The elaborate courtesy that often turns even the most mundane transaction into a graceful dance.  
It is wonderful too that every tiny extra bit of land gets turned into a garden, and where there's no land at least there's a window-box or pot or coffee can with colorful flowers growing in it. 
It's often cloudy and sometimes rains, which limits our outings and photography.

Of course, the sakura are a consistent theme.  We have lucked into arriving at exactly the point where the "sakura front" has reached central Japan, on its way from Okinawa to Hokkaido, and every time we go out they're irresistible -- and I take zillions more pictures of local folks enjoying them then I could ever actually have any use for.  We also learn a new phrase -- sakura shower -- to describe the result when vigorous wind meets delicate sakura blossom and sends tiny white petals floating toward you like snowflakes. 

While Midori and Dael snag groceries, I loiter by a stream, watching children and adults alike enjoy cherry blossoms -- on trees, in showers, and floating rapidly down the stream.

On another morning, Dael and I wander off on an errand and bit of exploration.  Beside a small vegetable garden amid shops and businesses, there's a forgotten-looking pond graced by an egret, a heron, and various other refugees, including a couple of black cormorants and some ducks.



The star of the show, for us, is the egret



Sometimes it happens that when Midori and Donald are out bicycling, he's the victim of racial profiling: without suspecting her of anything at all, the police stop Donald, surmising he's riding a stolen bicycle! Donald, accustomed to U.S. police, adopts a polite and submissive manner -- but Midori angrily demands to know why they've stopped him and not her too!

On the other hand, he does look pretty suspicious!

Naturally much of our delight in Osaka comes from Donaldo and Midori's warmth and hospitality.  Midori's mother and daughter are also very welcoming. 

Midori's daughter and mother

Dael shows the family images of NM

One evening we take the train in to downtown Osaka.  A friend of Midori's and Donald's, a jazz singer, is performing at a night club there, along with a quartet.

We enjoy jazz, and we enjoy this jazz group.  We hear a mixture of familiar tunes and some new ones, several written by the piano player, Kousuke Kanatani -- who is more animated than any pianist I've ever seen.  Yuka has a good voice.   It's a very enjoyable evening.

 

Going downtown also reminds us that the metropolitan area's population is comparable to New York City's.  One of its most famous views is as bright as Times Square.

The Cherry Blossoms [ Japan I ]

Sometimes as you shoot a photograph you realize it defines something, at least for you, with astonishing precision.

I shot this on the first morning of our recent visit to Japan. I isolated these four figures – and they, with the younger couple gaining on the older couple then framed by them, rearranged themselves as if on cue. Snap!

I shot it outside the Starbucks at Senri-chuo in Osaka. I was waiting for a man whom I intended to meet briefly, without accurately identifying myself. The game was simple: the man is my wife’s father; we had spoken frequently on the telephone, but we had never met face-to-face because he lives in Japan and we do not; and on the following day, as part of a plot hatched by us with his Japanese wife, we were going to surprise him, on his birthday, by suddenly appearing at his table in a restaurant, when he had no reason to suppose we were not in Doña Ana County, New Mexico.

I found a seat near the table in Starbuck’s at which he was going to teach conversational English for an hour or so. I hoped to have a casual "chance" conversation with him. For a few minutes I feared I wouldn’t manage that, but then he was holding the student’s infant. I quickly raised the camera and shot a photograph of him.  I showed it to him, and we spoke for a few minutes. I also showed him the photograph of youth framed by age, and he added a useful observation: that in light of Japan’s dangerously skewed demographics, the photograph of one very young couple and one very old couple summarized an important national fact.

To me, the image was evocative in a less specific and perhaps more poetic way. I was not sure whether the young couple were youthful memories of the old couple, the old couple represented the destiny of the young couple, or the sharp contrast made some other statement, but I sure felt sure it said something.  The journey from youth to age is so short, yet so absorbing to each of us! 

Too, for me its irrelevant context added something. The few moments’ conversation it spawned were fun, of course – for me at the time and after the next day for him too, as at odd moments one of us would recall the irony of our meeting without meeting and make some joke about it. But that has nothing to do with the image as an image.

Anyway, I like the image.  And this is the first of a sporadic series of four or five posts featuring images or experiences from our two weeks in Japan in April, mostly in Osaka.

That first morning also produced these other images:

After my encounter with Donald, Dael and I took the monorail to a park to gawk at the Cherry Blossoms.
Cherry trees, or sakura, symbolize spring, and their blossoms express the brevity and fragility of everything, including us.  On a very basic level, they're beautiful and ain't around too long, so Japanese flock to the parks and streets to view them while they're there.  (In earlier times, excursions organized to view the blossoms were known as hanami.)  They also hold a special place in Japanese culture (on which I'm no expert!), as the subject of countless tanka and haiku.  They are associated with samurai (who were expected to die young in battle) and even the kamikaze pilots of World War II.  They appear prominently in films and novels.  (Even the 2003 Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai featured a brief lecture by the samurai character played by Ken Watanabe on the importance of the sakura.) 

Everyone is fascinated by sakura

These folks, surrounded by sakura petals on the ground,
seemed immersed in their modern toys

This fellow, despite the physical handicap, was still intent on getting a good shot of the sakura.

There was something sobering in the sight of him.  In his intensity to get the shot, he's my brother, of course.  I'm also old enough to wonder whether some time I too may need assistance merely to photograph the flowers in the park.

He reminds me, as do the blossoms, of how short our journey here is, and of how much we prize it.
But I think the photograph way back at the start of this post said that better than I can, so why don't I shut up?

Home Again!

 

Yep, we're back in NM

Saturday night -- after two great weeks in Japan, three evenings entertaining wonderful friends from out-of-state, and a very long day shooting video of chalk artists at the Las Cruces Farmers' Market -- we are alone with the sunset, the cactus, and the coyotes.  Finally home!

As always, no matter how much we enjoy our travels, it's a delight to be home, too.   The bright colors of the bird-of-paradise, the ocotillo, and several cacti welcome us home, and the pensive doves and nervous quail serenade us.

We wander around checking everything out.   Last year, the bird-of-paradise had mostly died back to the ground, and spent the spring gaining size again before they blossomed.  This winter, spared them any such killer freeze, and they're already waving their showy flowers at us.

.

Not to be outdone, the ocotillo offer their bright red homage to the sun.

This morning we learned that they not only bloom sometimes after big rains, which we knew, but time their first flowering each year for precisely the time when hummingbirds are making their way North from Mexico.   (And every year from 1985 until last year, the hummingbirds arrived in Derry on April 1; last yearthey were a few days late.)

Experimentally, ocotillo have been removed to other latitudes, but the plants doggedly flower at their appointed time.

I don't even know exactly what these are. 

I just like the way they look in the late afternoon light, and photograph them. 







Of course I try various ways of photographing the ocotillo in context.

Mostly we just wander around our little patch of desert, seeing who's doing what, luxuriating in the sky and silence, grateful yet again to be here.

Immediately after the sun disappears, this strange ghostly cloud peers over the horizon, catching the bright rays of the now invisible sun: