Entering Turtle Land

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Old Japan slides - Part IV

洋子さん my friend Yoko san

Yoko is sitting on the steps across the street from where I lived in Kinugasa, Kita-Ku, Kyoto.

Here's a poem i wrote in Kyoto in 1986 for Yoko. The title of the poem is "Ocean Child" which comes from the kanji characters used to write Yoko's name: Yo = ocean and ko = child:

* * * * *

Ocean Child 洋子

Sometimes in my sleep
I hear echoes
like waves washing over me
wetting my skin
casting moist shadows

My sleep becomes blue and green
I hear the in and out of an ocean wave
I awake into blackness
knowing it was her again

Ocean woman comes to soothe my hot forehead
seaweed hands drip across my tangled hair
a mass of Japanese blue
kombu
dark heavy rain clouds burst open

Her eyes are the green slender leaves of my childhood
carried in a current of a clear small stream
Her eyes are deep brown lava islands
pickled brine
from the land of Amaterasu

~Nicole Raisin Stern
Kyoto 1986
(published in Atelier, a Boston area fine arts journal in the 90s)

My English class (from left to right: Mieko, Yoko, Emiko, and Sayuri).

I called them my "housewives' club", but actually, Mieko was divorced, all four were taking classes in Women's Studies with a feminist scholar and historian at a local college, and Yoko worked with a women's cooperative in Kyoto that runs an organic macrobiotic restaurant (Biotei びお亭, still in existence today). Here, I asked them to pose in front of the movie theatre in which we went to see "Out of Africa" in Kyoto with Japanese subtitles. The movie had just come out recently (1986). The class stayed together for over one year.

Kate washes hair

We could take an entire bath in a puddle or a water bottle we used to say.... In this picture, most of our house is drying out. The tent is on its side drying, the plastic tarps and our sleeping bags are all laid out to dry beneath a road. We slept beside the roads or in fields, in forests, even between buildings in vacant lots in cities. We just put up our tent when we needed to stop. In some places, we asked at the local police station where we could put up our tent for camping. On one occasion, the police drew us a map to the local park and woke us up in the morning with green tea.

Ganbatte, turtle, がんばって！！

Here is Kate next to a turtle sign that tells everyone to "keep on keeping on", 'ganbatte' in Japanese, only 5.2 km to go to reach the summit. This is a mountainous area of the Japan Alps where there are many hikers. The sign was meant for hikers following a trail up the mountain.

Nicole goes down the pass

Actually, not sure if we were heading up or down! I love pass riding; it's my favorite. I enjoy climbing up and up and up, then down. Here we are in the Japan Alps area.

Kate on pass

Again, not sure if she was going up or down the pass in this photo; you have to do both if you want to get over a pass.....

桜のニコニコ • Sakura smile

Our bodies age, but as we look up at the cherry blossom petals, we can feel the lightness of being. (Look closely and you will see that all the women in this photo are smiling).

畳屋さん - 京都

A tatami maker in Kyoto. A traditional craft. Tatami refers to the thick, tightly woven floor mats of bamboo that are placed wall to wall in traditional Japanese houses and/or rooms. One always walks upon the smooth tatami in socks or bare feet, leaving shoes at the genkan, or entrance to the house. The smell of fresh tatami is uniquely wonderful and the feel of the tatami underfoot is soft and comfortable. Rooms are measured by the tatami mat. The measurements of a room might be, for example, 6 tatami mats or 4.5 tatami mats.

もんぺ woman carrying sticks

In the morning I saw this woman walking in the thick forest where we were camped for the night. She was picking greens by the stream. Later on, we saw her here as she was walking on the road and we were about to cycle past.

House in rice field by ocean with koinobori - 能登半島 - Noto Hanto

This picture was taken sometime around Children's Day in May (1986) when the koinobori (carp kites) fly from houses with children (traditionally hung only for the boys). The road I was bicycling on is just above the house and field where you see the leaves in the foreground.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Old Japan slides - Part III

Today I took photos of another group of my Japan slides through the window again, but this time with an addition of a piece of white paper taped to the window. White paper makes the colors more blue and purple-y. Against the blue sky, I see more yellow in the slides. Interesting....

Fish drying women - 能登半島 c. 1986

These women are skewering fish for drying, so I called them "fish drying women". They could also be called "women drying fish" or "fisherwomen drying fish".... They were working in this warehouse open to the day as I was cycling on the road that encircles the Noto Peninsula (能登半島).

Little fish drying women

In 1986 when I took this photo I liked this man's beret and kimono and that his wife wore "western" style dress. I still like it. They both looked perfectly comfortable and content to enjoy a beautiful day at the Kyoto Botanical Gardens, in Kita-Ku, Kyoto.

Happy Buddha

Throughout Japan you will find statues of buddhas, bodhisattvas, gods and goddesses, and other celestial or magical beings placed in nooks between buildings and in specially built alcoves, altars, and shrines. They are taken care of and respected. Nobody disturbs the altars or statues or steals them as would likely happen in any city, USA.

Little Happy Buddha

Monday, May 14, 2007

Old Japan slides - Part II

When the sakura trees blossom in Kyoto, it is almost like snowfall, the petals and blossoms are dazzling. [This is me, April 1986, age 25]

Sakura in Kyoto. 京都の桜

I adjusted the "temperature" in this slide to make the colors a little warmer.

Wherever I went in Japan, there were noticeably more old people outside walking than here in the US. Especially in the early morning when I walked, I met many elders walking briskly or doing morning exercises. We always greeted each other with, "ohayou gozaimasu" (good morning).

Seaweed drying. Seaweed heaven!

Stone lantern.

I played with the adjustments in iPhoto to get some color in this photo. It's a little dark, but mysterious and mossy, like the woods in Japan.

This is the color of the Buddha slide now. The original stone was likely grayer in color.

I played with this Buddha in iPhoto, adjusting the color and cropping it.

These farmers are wheeling their fresh produce to a local market on the Noto Hanto 能登半島
(Noto Peninsula).

トンネル　tunnel

At the entrance/exit of the many tunnels we bicycled through in Japan, there are Jizo statues set up as altars or shrines for the protection of travellers through these tunnels. We certainly needed protection. Japan is more than 70% mountainous with many, many tunnels to go through when driving, walking, or bicycling through the country. Each time we came to a tunnel, we stopped for a moment at the jizo altar before switching on our bicycle lights. Next, we checked to see if we could see light or not (to know how long the tunnel might be) and then let out our loud cry of TON-NE-RU ! before entering the tunnel. Most of the tunnels had green, drippy slimy walls. When we could see light, or when the tunnel had only a narrow cement ledge for a walking path, and the walls were especially slimy and drippy, we would bicycle on the road itself, hoping the zoomy little trucks would see us. When the tunnel was really dark and long, riding in the middle of the lane with our flashing rear lights was actually safer than trying to navigate the narrow ledges while simultaneously wheeling our loaded bikes, trying to avoid the green drippy stuff, and not lose balance as the zippy cars and zooming trucks passed by. Arigatou, jizo-sama. Thanks to you, Jizo-sama.

Kate seated on the edge of a field getting the stove ready for our lunch.

Springtime -- bamboo shoots 竹の子 takenoko

My home on wheels.

Home for the night. The little yellow tent was home for two of us for up to 6 months at a time when we bicycle travelled. Fortunately, we lived more on our bicycles and outside than inside the small space of the tent.

Journal writing and drawing en route. We were (and are) always en route....

Waiting for the head priest to arrive on his white horse (below) at Kamigamo Jinja (Shinto Shrine) in Kyoto.

Kamigamo Jinja, Kyoto.

Shrines on rocks, rocks that are shrines, trees that are sacred, and roadside altars are everywhere in Japan. In nature, in the city, in the nature that is in the cities, in people and in offices, too.

Wakame seaweed drying on Noto Hanto. Yum!

A gardener at a botanic gardens.

Field in the Minami Alps region of Japan.

Fish drying.

Hinouki wood carving workshop in Kyoto. Hinouki is the beautiful blonde wood that is used to make some geta (sandals), exquisitely hewn ofuro (deep bathtubs), and other fine craftwork.

Little neighbor boy and his obaachan (grandmother) next to the small ryokan where I stayed in Narita-shi.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

New Experiment; Old Japan slides, Part I

Me on bike, Japan 1986

Bicycle camping in Japan, 1986. I remember that we set up our tent in a park in this circle of trees in the middle of a city.

Rice planting

Elemental Japan. Rice. Trees, Mountains. Water. Planting. Thinking in the field. The field has frogs, crickets, birds, sky, rain, worms, humans, rice plants, sunshine. You can see it all in the kanji character for thinking which is composed of a rice field 田 and a heart 心 and looks like this: 思

Me and Fuji-san 富士山

Me with our little yellow tent

* * * * * * * * *

In 1985, my then partner, Kate, and I decided to sell all of our posessions and go on an "around-the-world bicycle trip" starting from our home in Flagstaff, Arizona. We left on April 25, 1985 in a blizzard. We would camp and cook our own food, living outside and stopping to work jobs when we needed the money. The first leg of our journey took us through Northern Arizona, Utah, Idaho, part of Montana, Washington, British Columbia and Yukon, Canada, and Alaska. On September 11, 1985 we arrived in Japan with our bicycles in boxes. Here is part of the visual story.

These photos are part of an experiment I am doing. I have several boxes of slides from my time living and bicycling in Japan (1985-1988) that I didn't develop until 10-12 years after they were taken (about 20-22 years ago). The slides are mostly blue in tone with the yellows and reds having faded out over time. I am going to experiment by shooting each slide as close as i can with my simple digital camera, playing with angle and light source (window? white paper underneath? adjust color in iPhoto? Leave it as is?). All the slides were taken with an Olympus XA2 35mm camera).

Today, I also found 10 rolls of undeveloped slide film from the Alaska-BC-Yukon portion of my bicycle adventure.... I wonder if any color at all will be left on that film. Probably mostly cyan (blue). Sayonara, yellow and magenta. I've written a little about my Japan experience here--just a beginning. I plan to write more about Japan later. Actually, my Japan experience enters into everything I do and am, so you can "read it" in my art and photos, too. You can see the entire (growing) set of these new old Japan slides here on fickr. Enjoy!