Duckphone!

I was sifting through boxes of miscellaneous junk from a past life when I came across this relic of the 80s I don't remember having: Duckphone.

Maia models Duckphone. Then, Duckphone is an integral part of any powerful gentleman's table arrangement.

It may have come from Radio Shack, but I only recall ever having purchased a "futuristic" neon tube-filled phone from them in the distant past. Whatever the case, you are looking at my new method of land line communication: Conversation through the hollowed-out body of a wooden waterfowl.

Update: Duckphone does indeed work! However, it doesn't seem to possess the ability to ring, but that may be balanced by the reality that its eyes light up with red LEDs when you pick it up. Is Duckphone possessed by demons of technology's past or just misunderstood? Time--possibly our screams--will tell.

--Matt

Are There Drive-Ins in Addis Ababa?

It's been just over one week since I bid Japan adieu and to celebrate my homecoming Maia and I wanted to have a night out in SF bumbling around the Mission. I have to admit, I have my doubts about the Mission: While there is cause for frisson somewhere in this neighborhood at any given time, packed with whatever elusive element makes San Francisco the fabulous, enjoyably quirky place it is, the old dot-com hangers-on and hipster crowd always held me at bay. I usually come for the food and stay for nothing else.

Not this night though. We were drawn in by two events, first the 3-Minute Film Festival happening at the artist co-op Root Division, and second an event known as Writers With Drinks, a sort of stand-up/book reading/talk show amalgam that was put on at the Make Out Room. Well, we tried the Make Out room first, but that was a no-go because of a line halfway down the block of people waiting to poach the spots of anyone foolish enough to leave. Far too impatient and hungry to play that game we moved on to Valencia and looked for some grub. The film festival had already begun, but we didn't care--we'd found Ethiopian heaven.

I think Ethiopian is one of the neglected awesome cuisines of the world. You eat a sort of veggie or meat (or both) stew, called a "wat", with a flimsy, spongy piece of bread and using just your hands. No utensils whatsoever. The sense of freedom this instills in me is the real star of the meal. I think we all tend to use tools so often in our lives at work or even in play that we forget there're times it's fine to just use our natural talents, abilities and, um...apendages. Try it, you'll like it.

Cleaned up and stomachs filled (but only just--the portions were perfect) we caught the second half of the film festival after a brief wait outside while space was made in the cramped warehouse workspace. Some people say "Let he who is without fault throw the first stone," but I'm not one of them, so let me tell you that most of the films were conceptual garbage. Granted there's not much one can do with a scant three minutes of allowed footage, but panning around a CG image of exploded red glass with a hyper-annoying whistle in the background, sealing a video camera in a plastic baggie and taking it underwater to film some kid in a pool, etc. do not make enjoyable viewing. On the plus side there were several entertaining or visually exciting entries and I give those artists major kudos.

So now that I've bashed the baddies you're probably saying I should put my money where my mouth is and you know, I think I will. Anyone have a digital camera I can borrow?

More info on Ethiopian food can be found here.

--Matt

This Is Most Definitely NOT Summer

I believe it was Mark Twain that said "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco", and once again I am living that reality. From sunny, muggy jungle heat (sexy!) to overcast, windy gloom: Oh, what a difference 5000 miles or so makes.

Back home...those two words are so loaded I cringe a bit every time I stumble into saying them to someone. I suppose I feel a bit like an international vagabond now, a scoundrel not flying a flag very long in any single place for the past several years, instead jumping back and forth between cosmopolitan San Francisco, the secluded Japan of Oita Prefecture and slow-paced Castro Valley. A segment of the first two will always define a part of me, while the third I'm trying to cut off with a machete as if it were some evil conjoined twin on my shoulder.

For now Maia and I have set up a sort of Hooverville within my parent's house with our collective mass of bags taking up the back room because they can't possibly fit into my old corner cave. How long we will live in the beautiful-yet-soulless hills of the East Bay depend entirely on how many job offerings we can find for positions that won't smother our spirit for life and then how many of those employers even want to speak to us. As of now the count is many of the former and zero of the latter.

*sigh*

Such is the way of things.

--Matt

Final Dispatch?

United 886 departing from Kansai International is hopelessly overbooked, I'm told, and yet I find myself one of three people in an arena-sized departures lobby leeching off somebody's wireless while a disturbed, possibly chemically imbalanced woman rants at her computer to my one o'clock. I was offered a cool $400 ducats from United to drop my priority standing on this flight and shunt myself through Hawaii for way too many hours, and declined after some careful consideration into what it would take to call my ride (my parents) and relay that I'd be in at 9PM instead of 11AM. The walk to the international phone card was about fifteen meters--fourteen too long, I'm that anxious to rise above and away from this strip of terra firma.

Indeed, this will be my last bit of blogging from Japan, but I nor this page are giving up the ghost just yet. There's simply far too much of a good thing going on in the Bay Area and, at least in the short-term, my schedule's *ahem* opened up a bit now that I've joined--what percentage is it now--the California 10%-ers. No better time than the present to try on the good-natured vagabond jacket.

There are a raft of people I need to thank before this post is over, it's difficult to know where even to begin:

--The sane people at the Kusu Board of Education, past and present, which includes, Watanabe-san, Goto-san, Hiramatsu-san and Akiyoshi-san. They all helped more than hassled (if they hassled at all, that is) and my life would have been much more difficult out of the starting blocks were it not for them. It's too bad Watanabe-san (formerly Nogami) left for maternity purposes and left me in a lurch with--*shudder*--Honda-san, who hounded me with her incompetence all the way until Fukuoka Airport. Thank you all the rest, and curse you Honda!

--Uno Chizuru, a woman far too cool for Hita City (actually, I can say that about the following two people as well, but Chizuru gets the treatment first). I met Chi-chan a few months after I arrived at a winter solstice party and we clicked like a pair of castanets. Throughout the two years she and I have maintained a steady friendship, but I can't help and feel like I took more than I gave: We spoke almost entirely in Japanese and most of my language gain on this rotation is thanks to her. We're destined to meet again in the not-too-distant future, so until then!

--90% of my new wardrobe is thanks to a single person: Oita City's very own Ogura Rie. People joke about being dressed by their mothers or whoever, but this is a very real story of triumph from when one allows their fashion choices to be dictated by someone with infinitely better taste than their own. And I am in no way ashamed to admit that! We met while I was shopping for wacky shirts at Oita's FORUS department store where she was manning the T-fact counter with a great big perfect, and most importantly, GENUINE smile. I was caught in the spider web from there on out. Rie is a self-taught master of the English language and I respect her a ton for it. I mean, how many Japanese people will you ever hear say "Fuck you so much, and the horse you rode in on!"

--Usuzuki Mayumi I met five years ago (Jesus H. Christ, it's been five years since my study abroad days!) when I was tutoring English for quick side cash at Oita University. Again, like Chizuru, I feel I've taken more than I've given and have a lingering, palpable guilt in my belly. Our schedules and geographical positions made meeting difficult, but every time we did get the chance it was nothing less than magical. For all my bitching and moaning about the inaka here is a stunning example of a person born in the country who's transcended that culture mentally and now is setting goals to physically transcend it as well. In other words, she wants to get out, she knows why and now she's started a drive to better herself, never settling. Damn inspirational, if you ask me. Thanks for being a kick in the pants for my ambitions and I will do everything in my power to help you achieve yours.

--Of course, I couldn't possibly end this list without saying thank you to my beautiful, brilliant girlfriend, the human natto-vacuum herself, Maia Z. Without Maia it's entirely possible I would have turned to armed robbery to work out the stress of ALT life. I'm telling you, it's just not worth the trouble to smash n' grab a few onigiri, so I'm in your debt.

I'll get to more Thank Yous later, but my battery's about to go and the flight's about to board. If I crash and die and my remains are never found then just know that I went down clawing out the eyes of my neighboring passenger in an orgy of fear and anger.

No, scratch that. For posterity's sake it's best not to be remembered that way.

--Matt

Doctor, My Eyes

I suppose one would have to be under a rock, passed out from a week or more of binge drinking Benadryl and Draino not to have heard about the total solar eclipse happening across Asia today. The region of totality was a few hundred kilometers south, down off the coast of Kagoshima (is there anything not awesome about that place?), but we in Kusu got a 89% eclipse nonetheless and it was awesome!

I'm notoriously cheap when it comes to these temporary fascinations in life, so I didn't spring for the 500-yen polarized specs like all the other suckers did here, I just came up with two alternative free solutions: First, use a pool of dirty, low-albedo rainwater on the ground to reflect the image into my eyes; use the polarized faceplate of my cell phone to reflect the image into my eyes. Money saved is peanut or sesame tofu (mmm...)bought, that's what I always say.

The event stretched from about 10:15AM to 11:30AM local time, but the best bits were around 10:45-50. I arranged to meet Maia at the bridge in the middle of town for a couple of Eclipse Happy Hour beers and sushi. Besides, who in their right mind would work through something like this? I never thought I'd ever see an eclipse in my life and I'd be a colossal fool not to seize the opportunity.

Now, with motivation and execution well out of the way, oddly enough I don't have volumes to say on the event. It was noticeably darker—which I suppose you'd expect when only 11% of the sun's light is reaching you—and I imagined that's what life in winter near the Arctic Circle must be like day in and day out. Again with the Arctic feeling, it was also way, way colder than it had been just an hour earlier when, in the office, I was sweating in a short-sleeve. Even if the 89% occultation lasted for only a handful of minutes I still count this as another notch on my belt of rare and spectacular natural phenomena that I've experienced in Japan, right alongside the eruption of Sakurajima, earthquakes and typhoons. As I've lived through them all it just proves to me that Mother Nature will never be the death of me, instead that honor will most likely go to a banana peel and an unfortunately placed formica countertop.

--Matt

The Ultimate, Part 4

So much has changed in Kagoshima since the first time I came with my parents on an ill-conceived visit in late summer 2004—all of it for the positive. I'm reminded of the Phillip K. Dick short Second Variety for some reason, where the “Claw” robots developed by the U.N. For use against the Soviets continue to adapt themselves to become better at infiltrating human social groups in order to exterminate them. Like the fictional Claws, Kagoshima continues to evolve into something designed to ensnare me—it remains the only Japanese city I've visited to do so. The Central Station complex (magnificent as always, perhaps second in grandeur only to Kyoto Station) is 100% finished, with all the subterranean access tunnels finally complete. One of the more impressive facelifts has to be how the streetcar lines have all had their tracks repaved in an environmentally friendly concrete made from the recycled ash spew of Sakurajima. Furthermore, grass has actually been planted on this surface (as one sees in many European cities with streetcar lines) giving the appearance that the low-slung cars are just floating along on a fluffy bed of grass. The summer heat and humidity...ahhh!...perfection.

In Kagoshima streetcars are called chinchindensha, the onomatopoeia derived from their bell's ringing. In coloquial Japanese, chinchin means "penis", causing much grade school-style snickering among tourists.

After checking into our hotel Maia and I hopped a streetcar to Starbucks for the very guilty pleasure of a couple iced coffees and people watching, which turned out to be more difficult than we had thought. You see, our people watching really peaked when Maia lived in Kitakyushu and we could walk down to her nearby mall Starbucks where a Roman legion of anorexic, Chihuahua-toting, track suit-sporting, blonde-dyed, makeup-caked, Japanese analog to American trailer trash-style men and women congregated to blow the money and time they should obviously have been spending on their malnourished, unloved kids, and it was all just so much shooting fish in a barrel to sit there and marvel audibly at the very worst embodiments of the 21st Century knowing full well they wouldn't catch a single word you were saying. Whew. In Kagoshima, where men and women are (mostly) fashionable, self-respecting and have a look of at least a cursory education the pickings were slim and the spirit wasn't willing. I can't argue that's a bad thing though.

And now, for no reason, a schoolgirl lap pillow you can win at an arcade! Notice the sitting position with the legs splayed out to the side slightly there--denotes that this surogate lap is that of a very underage girl and that you are, in fact, a complete sleaze if you own this. (I won three)

It wasn't long before hunger gripped us and the dinner search ensued, but not for long. That's the thing here: You just can't walk more than a handful of minutes before finding someplace good to eat/something nice to browse. This time we stumbled upon what will go down as one of my all-time best finds in Japan, a second-floor Sri Lankan restaurant with some of the cheapest, tastiest curry I've ever had, not just in Japan, but anywhere! I wasn't quite as hungry as Maia and ordered a mini portion only to have it differ from the normal size by seemingly a pitiful handful of centimeters in plate diameter. I would have accepted a mere drizzling of this curry though, for it was heavenly in flavor. After this dinner Maia and I parted ways for an hour so I could indulge my lust for Kagoshima's specialty, kurobuta (“black pig”), and headed for a local favorite restaurant. The kurobuta donburi I ordered was...orgasmic. Huzzah for second dinner!

The hip part of downtown, just behind the Tenmonkan shopping arcade. Our Sri Lankan friends are just off to the left.

To sort of work off our dinner we went for a streetcar ride and a bit of a walk into the quietest entertainment neighborhood in Japan, Kishaba, a yokocho (a side alley) frequented by college students from the nearby university and the metro sophisticate type. My favorite izakaya/dining bar in this area is a second-story joint with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over a quaint four-way intersection called...I can't remember, but I can find it nonetheless. We had a couple beers, at the most delicious dish of goya champloo EVER and chatted for a while before catching a train back to Tenmonkan and our hotel. Oh, along the way we fed a ridiculously cute alley cat and finally saw some of the more skanky members of Kagoshima's human element, but what do you expect in the largest, seediest entertainment district in Southern Japan?

Ah, the Kishaba Donguri Yokocho. If you're ever in town that there second-floor izakaya is tops!

The next day, before beginning the trek home, we visited the newly built Future of Kagoshima's Environment museum, a stunning piece of green architecture that practices what it preaches—a difficult thing to find in Japan. The building is constructed of recycled materials, cooled by termite mound thermoregulation techniques, topped by a grass roof you can picnic or play on and filled with informative displays backed by hard numbers. I was, to say the least, impressed. The displays of trash art inspired me to build my own steel coffee can sculptures (I've shipped back my entire can collection, over fifty in all, to help me in this endeavor) and hopefully build a few bits of furniture out of cardboard or used books.

I sure hope the people of Kagoshima know what they have in this green roof here. The view is might fine.

Alas, the vacation—this last view of my personal Utopia Japan—was at an end. Disengaging from Kagoshima's newfound environmental savvy, its delicious vittles and quirky little single-speed hipster subculture almost caused me to tear out the spark plugs from my car if only it meant I could stay for a little bit longer...and hawk the copper at a pawn store. Though I've toyed around with plenty of cities here in Japan, touching and teasing and sussing the situation out, Kagoshima, you're the only girl for me! Let's not lose touch after high school!

--Matt

The Ultimate, Part 3

OK, I have to concede one minor problem with free beach camping: The total lack of any bathrooms or wash facilities of any sort. When the morning sun has turned the inside of one's borrowed black tent into a virtual sauna, just a quick post-rise face wash would feel like the cleansing power of the finest hot spring, but there wasn't even a basic cold water spigot anywhere nearby. We took down the tent sheathed in a slimy, sandy paste and drove towards the nearest conbini in the direction of Kagoshima to do our trucker thing with their facilities. Nothing like a good scrub in a roadside sink to put the luxury of even the most basic tenement bathroom in perspective.

On the road again, transecting the southernmost peninsula of Kyushu, and we come across the first indication that not all is right economically on this part of the island. Maia and I had noticed all down Miyazaki Prefecture's eastern coast that even though the region was not heavily industrialized the businesses were vibrant, downtowns (regardless of size) weren't shuttered wastelands and everything had a very un-Chugoku feel to it (see the Golden Week trip posts, specifically Shunan). Unfortunately the same could not be said of Shibushi and Kannoya (the latter literally meaning “deer room”), two cities in need of TLC. I just hate seeing this fate befall Kyushu cities, but I suppose it doesn't help when your city is fifty kilometers away from the nearest expressway, at the dead end of a train line and has no useful sea links. This area should become the mecca of Japanese survivalist/recluses if it isn't already.

When inland plain finally gives way to the southeastern coast of Kagoshima's Kinko Bay and a royal flotilla of fishing boats bobbing in the sun you know you've entered the long, lithe fishing city of Tarumizu, a place with a couple intensely good memories from 2008's Golden Week trip. It was then, while exiting the Nafco hardware store after buying some silicon grease for my bike axles, that Sakurajima erupted in front of my eyes and filled me that profound sense of “holy shit!” and an appreciation for life through demonstration of the fact that we're all just smart apes floating on a ball of unspeakably hot magma. Back then I rode like a demon towards the eruption, this time we drove in ghetto style slowly towards the volcano's backside and pulled into the Tarumizu michi no eki, the best damn road station in Japan (as far as I'm concerned). This eki has two things that set it apart from all the rest: a fabulous, free foot bath shaded by cabana umbrellas that looks out over shellfish traps and Sakurajima, and the best biwa (loquat) culinary creations I have ever tasted. The yakuza onsen (back tattoos are A-OK here!) was closed until noon for some reason, so we had to remain filthy a tad bit longer (a blessing in disguise as you'll soon see), but there was a man with a complete painting studio in a tiny kei-van creating images of the volcano to entertain and amaze as thoughts of loquat soft-serve ice cream, loquat jam and loquat donuts danced through my head.

I could sit here with a book all my life and just read until doomsday or the volcano explodes, killing everyone. Whichever comes first.

The plan from Tarumizu was to drive around the rim of Sakurajima to the ferry port and load the car for a short trip across to the city where our hotel awaited. Halfway around the island we took a gamble on a hotel onsen that we thought was the famous Furosato no Yu and, as it turned out, it was a good day to be rolling the dice. This onsen is often seen in tourism pamphlets for Kagoshima and seeing it in person one understands immediately why it's the perfect hot springs symbol for the prefecture. Perched a meter or two above sea level, only a lava rock wall and some concrete separate the bay's saltwater from the pool of nigh-scalding sodium-rich water with a massive mangrove perched over one side—on this clear day it was a stunning synergy of earth, sea, sky and fire.

Tell me you've ever seen something so enchanting, please.

Before leaving Sakurajima behind we just had to visit the campy dinosaur park located on a ridiculously steep hill overlooking the port. Since Sakurajima as a land mass is only 13,000 years-old it's just impossible—unless you're a Christian fundamentalist—for any dinosaurs to exist on or even near Kagoshima, so why the dinosaur park? Who knows, but you can't let those details come between you and fun, especially when large fiberglass dino models with flaking paint call out to be climbed on. It'll fill your heart with joy and your hands with microscopic fiberglass splinters.

Rawr...?

Departing the Land of the Lost, it was time to catch our ferry down the hill—a new experience since I've never driven a car on a boat before. Now, to tell the truth, it wouldn't have been terribly difficult to just drive the car around the north reach of the bay and save the 1,500-yen ferry vehicle fee, but there was an ulterior motive at play here. Several months ago Maia had done some voice recording work in Fukuoka for the English announcer voices one hears on trains, buses, moving walkways, etc., or, in her case, for the Sakurajima ferry. She was paid for the job even though no word of whether or not the voice was actually used came in her direction, thus our little fact-finding crossing. Sure enough, just after the Japanese announcer ended her spiel, Maia's voice came up and directed me to enjoy my ride...or else! Seriously though, it was a disconcerting experience to hear the disembodied voice of my girlfriend giving me safety directions while she's standing right there. Oh, this wacky era we live in.

Next time, the conclusion! Huzzah!

--Matt