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NEPAL: KATHMANDU
NEPAL: TREK
NEPAL: CHITWAN
CHINA
BURMA
LAOS
JAPAN
VIETNAM
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Japan
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Very Cherry: Confessions of the Sakura Samurai
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The definition of Japanese spring is cherry blossoms, which are called sakura, and come in 55 varieties! Sakura season in Japan can’t be beat. Rain or shine, the pink and white blossoms are sublime. As in North America, spring weather is very changeable, but we found that the sakura are just as picturesque against dark and stormy clouds as they are in the sun, or lantern-lit at night. Our itinerary was close to perfect in terms of seeing the local color. As we made our way to southern Japan, the blossoms were maturing, then in full bloom as we headed north. By the end of the trip, we saw wet streets laden and patterned with fallen blossoms after a heavy rainstorm. What is so charming about this season is that the Japanese citizens don’t take their beautiful blossoms for granted. Not at all. Weather announcers give regular updates on where in the country the sakura are at their best. Hanami celebrations (sakura viewing parties, or festive picnics under the trees) are held, rain or shine.
Japan should pass a law to keep cherry blossoms blooming all year. The people would be continuously happy, and the weatherwomen on TV would have to get degrees in botany instead of just climatology. Because we tended to stay away from large cities, we were so saturated with pink celebratory sites, that it was hard to imagine Japan without the blossoms. One Japanese woman asked us, “Do you have cherry blossoms in America?” We explained about Washington DC’s cherry blossoms and how they were given to the US by Japan. |
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Sisters
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The Japan adventure was W’s brainchild. After his artist residency in Shikoku in 2004, W was so enamored of Japan that he volunteered to be the lone instigator and coordinator of the first ever Berkeley-Sakai Sister City artists’ exchange. A year and a half plus another trip to Japan in 10/05 for W later, 15 Berkeley artists and their families traveled to Sakai to stay with Japanese host families and display their artwork at a joint show of 20 Berkeley artists and 45 Sakai artists, which was held at the Sakai City Cultural Hall galleries.
Sakai, an old cultural and commercial center near Osaka, is one of the original trading ports of Old Japan. It has a population of 800,000, which makes it the 15th largest city in Japan. We aren’t quite sure why Berkeley and Sakai are sister cities, since they don’t have much in common; but they have had this relationship for nearly 40 years, and the friendships which have developed as a result were helpful in starting this artists’ exchange.
The Berkeley-Sakai art reception and opening was the Saturday after we arrived. Unimpeded by those in various stages of jetlag, 50 plus artists were able to introduce their art in a walking lecture format, which featured both Japanese and English. The Sakai liaison, Shibuya-san (san is an honorific suffix which applies to any person or object worthy of respect), did all the coordinating and the translation. He was also tour guide, host, and facilitator. By the end of the first day, the Berkeley artists wanted to give him five gold metals. Shibuya-san, working with W via zillions of e-mails, had found Japanese host families for all the artists who had come to Japan and desired home stays (five were not able to come), and organized the parties, the day trips and the studio viewings, all of which happened during the first week there. Granted that Shibuya-san is a paid city employee who was only doing his job, but he clearly went above and beyond his job description, leaving a team of volunteer interpreters with little to do. |
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Party Animals
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The Berkeley artists had a splendid time. It helped that they fell in love with their respective host families. The Japanese families, with their varying degrees of English-speaking ability, could not have been kinder, treating their guests to private tours, home cooked meals and showering them with gifts. Most of the artists were taken to Nara, the ancient capital, for a day trip as well as to a traditional Japanese puppet theatre called Bunraku in Osaka, which was the precursor to Kabuki.
After the art opening, there was a reception at a restaurant in the main park. It included many goodwill speeches by everyone who had any role in the exchange or any city official with a title, plus W, who was last and fortunately brief, as we were dying to get to the drinking and hors d’oeuvres, which had been waiting, covered in plastic, for the formalities to be over. It only took a few beers for the Japanese artists to break into song and dance. They took turns showing off their acts in an impromptu talent show: a harmonica ditty, some national songs, and then a traditional dance around the room with arms waving in the air. After this, it was unexpectedly but absolutely required that the American contingent step up to the stage. Fortunately, we had a ham in our group who was just tipsy enough to overcome her shyness. She first led everyone in the song “You are My Sunshine,” and then the interactive, no-need-for-direct-translation “Hokey-Pokey”. It was a cross-cultural crowd pleaser. The Japanese really know how to throw a party.
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Happy Hanami
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| A few nights later, we were treated to a Hanami party on the one day it did not rain that week! We were taken to a 250-year-old wooden teahouse with tatami (traditional woven grass floor mats) and paper sliding screens in a residential neighborhood in Sakai. It had a traditional ornamental garden, a white-pebbled courtyard with an old weeping cherry tree and a large interior. Upon arrival, we had the requisite speeches and toasts. The entertainment in the courtyard was a trio consisting of a didgeridoo player (an unexpected delight), playing with a Japanese bamboo flute player, and a slow-mo Butoh-inspired (post-war modern Japanese dancing) dancer in the bonfire-lit courtyard. It was quite chilly, and the bare footed dancer was dancing on gravel with very controlled motions — very Zen-like. As the sun set, we ate a bento (a box divided into sections each with a different dish) dinner inside and watched the show in bonfire lit courtyard. The dancer performed an improvised rite of spring, imitating the growth stages of a blossoming cherry tree. We then watched a martial arts display, which the young boys in our group were delighted to join in. After such a wonderful visit, the Berkeley artists fully recognized that we have a hard act to follow, and are already excitedly making plans to reciprocate when the Japanese artists come to Berkeley in July, 2007. |
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Itineraries: four weeks in all
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W: week one
Berkeley to SF to Osaka (Japan’s second city), to Sakai (Berkeley’s sister city), Koyasan (holy mountain filled with monasteries), Miho Museum outside of Kyoto (designed by I.M. Pei), Kamiyama (site of W’s artist residency in 2004), Tokushima (old castle town), Takamatsu (old castle town with famous garden), Osaka, and Sakai.
W & H: weeks two thru four
Sakai to Kyoto (old capital), Sakai, Osaka, Himeji (site of Japan’s most famous castle), Miyajima (island shrine), Tsuwano (old intact castle town), Hagi (old castle town noted for its pottery and samurai houses), Itsumo Taisha (Japan’s oldest Shinto shrine), Matsue (old castle town), Adachi Museum and Garden in Yongi (heavenly gardens), Amanohashidate (a long tree-filled sand spit regarded as one of the ‘Three Most Beautiful Spots’ of Japan), Kanazawa (‘Kyoto of the west’ with Japan’s most famous garden), Noto Peninsula (a wild and wooly place filled with fisherman and mystics), Tokyo (capital), Kamakura (old military capital), Tokyo, and home.
We initially traveled down the southeastern coast of the main island of Honshu along the Seto Sea (Inland Sea facing the Pacific). We then went west across Honshu to the southwestern coast of the Sea of Japan (facing China) and headed north to Kanazawa and the Noto Peninsula. We ended our trip going east to Tokyo and Kanazawa, which are on the Pacific.
We found the cost of living in Japan, once one of the most expensive places on earth, to be similar to the SF Bay area. Japanese are still heavy smokers but they smoke less in public places than they use to due to recent restrictions.
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Like A Bullet
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| Our main method of travel around Japan was by train. Trains in Japan are excellent; they are punctual to the minute, clean, and convenient to everything, but expensive. Our two-week JR train passes cost about $500 each for unlimited travel, which was a bargain considering how much train travel normally costs there (amongst the most expensive in the world). We made sure to make maximum use of them, however, and lost count after 50 train rides during our stay. The Shinkansen (the ultra-modern bullet train) was a thrill as it was more like riding a jet plane than a train. It could travel up to 300 mph. It seemed that it could cross half the country in half an hour, which is really not enough time to take a nap since the bullet train stops at a station for less than 2 minutes. This meant one could easily miss one’s stop if one wasn’t ready, with suitcases in hand, to off-board. Ditto with boarding. We started on the bullet train, but ended up in the countryside in a conductor-less, one-car train from the 1960s, which was like a bus on tracks. As we boarded this curiosity, the driver stood up and made a series of unusual hand gestures over his belly, which we eventually interpreted as meaning to say that the train had no toilet and we should make sure we relieved ourselves before boarding. All trains, old and new, were equally punctual. |
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Love Story
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We were walking outside of the massive train station in Osaka in some rare sunshine during week one of our stay there. Besides the rich people-watching opportunities, there were some ‘Love Hotels’ to photograph. Love hotels, overly decorated with Disney-like façades, are where young couples can rent rooms by the hour for private trysts. Japanese live in tiny apartments and have very little privacy. The cost of getting a place of one’s own is so prohibitive that many unmarried youth, often well into their thirties, are living with their parents. Hence the need for love hotels — not the same thing as brothels.
While in this colorful neighborhood, we passed a sign that said in English, ‘Internet Café, 2nd floor’. Feeling the need to check our e-mail, we mounted the stairs, and came upon an empty room with only two computers. There was a counter near the door with several open magazines with pictures of young, attractive women. H was not interpreting the obvious, as she had jet lag, but W was just beginning to figure out that we were in an escort service office, when a gentleman came bounding up the stairs behind us and fervently explained to us in English that a real internet café was at another address. He had perhaps had to explain this misunderstanding before?
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Cheesecake
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| It was cold and rainy in Kyoto, but sometimes weather can create stories. We were seeking warmth and a bite to eat so we ducked into an almost empty diner in a quiet residential neighborhood of Kyoto. We were armed with an illustrated dictionary to help decipher the menu. The one other customer of this neighborhood joint, smoking, but friendly, helped us to translate. The lady who owned the place, and lived there, had a fat cat who wandered around the restaurant. She was definitely a cat lover — so a good conversation starter. The cat’s name, she said, was Cheesecake — in English. After we got our lunch, she leaned over and said in a very throaty voice, “pardon me” in Japanese. We said “yeees?” Then she asked, “if we were, by any chance, movie stars?” H actually understood the word for “movie!" After we admitted that we were not, we got down to a discussion of her love for Cheesecake, who himself looked as if all he ate was his namesake. |
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Castle in the Sky
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| We saw the mother of all Japanese castles, Himeji, on the way to Miyajima. Japanese castles are much more awe inspiring on the outside than the inside, unless you’re a Zen architect. There is rarely furniture in the vast rooms and long hallways, just clean wooden lines, paneling and artwork. Your imagination is invited to fill in the rest. It was the weekend at the height of the sakura season. It made for great people watching to see everyone partying under the cherry blossoms in view of the castle, which seemed to rise up into the sky. Thank you, Rain God, for taking that day off! Big festival lanterns, and white and pink everywhere! Cross-cultural prize sighting: a bona fide American Indian, all dressed up in tribal gear, being interviewed by Japanese television. |
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Oh Deer!
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Since ancient times, Miyajima, an island in the Seto Sea (Inland Sea) across the bay from Hiroshima, is regarded as one of the ‘Three Most Beautiful Spots’ of Japan. It is an island with many famous shrines, including the World Heritage site of Itsukushima, an ancient and revered Shinto shrine, and temples, as well as ryokans (traditional Japanese inns), forests, hiking trails and mountains. Miyajima is also the island of wild and not so wild sacred deer. They mingle with the people, accept treats but shy away from being touched. The deer keepers, outfitted in professional garb, treat them lovingly. [People and deer alike in this land are blissfully ignorant of deer ticks.]
We got off the ferry and were greeted by the sight of many pedestrians and deer. The sun was strong that day and we were fiercely hungry. W had a green tea ice cream and H chose the anti-carb snack of a giant-squid-on-stick (the only one necessary to eat on the whole trip, as there was MUCHO squid on that stick). There was so much eye candy: people and deer interactions, and temple hopping, that it took us an hour to make our way on foot to the hotel, heavy suitcases not withstanding. The next day, the weather held long enough for us to take a major 5-hour hike up to the highest temple atop one of the island’s peaks.
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Inns and Outs
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| Japanese accommodations vary widely. We culture-vultures aimed for the classic ryokan style of Japanese inn, complete with tatami mats, cozy rooms, and giant soaking tubs downstairs plus dining cross-legged at low tables with chopsticks. These days, traditional ryokans as popular with Westerners as with Japanese. Japanese tourists prefer luxury. That’s because they have a lot less time to relax than we do. On average, the Japanese only take 2 days off at a time, so they might as well go for it and be pampered to the $500 per night hilt. We also stayed in a couple of cheaper minshukus (a cross between a ryokan and a B&B). You had a choice between western and Japanese rooms and breakfasts. Inn keepers were often perplexed that we chose Japanese all the way. We slept on tatami mats, buckwheat pillows and futons (traditional thin roll-up mattresses - not like the American version), which is a challenge when one has a fractured shoulder. [W had fractured his left shoulder skiing in February and then developed a frozen shoulder, which made sleeping Japanese style both painful and challenging.] |
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Fawlty Towers
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We arrived in Tsuwano, a former castle town midway between Japan’s two coasts, in a ferocious rainstorm, that, upon exiting the station, immediately destroyed our one umbrella. We found our ryokan with the help of the taxi driver. The intoxicated, blundering, but well-meaning owner was adept at shouting about 10 words of English. He welcomed us but then made it clear that we had to find something to do outside until 3pm, even in the tsunami-like conditions. This was a common practice of Japanese inns. Guests were supposed to clear out from 10am-3pm for ‘cleaning’. It was a nice way of saying, “go out and play and stay away."
After swimming our way through town, we returned and were shown to a large room with a screened-in porch overlooking a small rock garden. The next day, we were moved to a smaller but less scruffy room for reasons we could only guess at. The rooms of this half empty inn were all traditional and in need of a fresh coat of paint. This ‘Fawlty Towers’ would have been a depressing place to stay in this quiet town with the bad weather, had it not been for the amazing spread and service we experienced while dining. The town itself made for good walks and breathtaking views from nearby hills studded with temples, shrines and a ruined castle.
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East Feast
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The food in Japan was fresh, delicious and beautifully presented. And there was plenty of it! The first ten days we would so look forward to dinner--the way a child would look forward to opening Christmas presents. The Japanese have a way with presentation, particularly food. At Fawlty Towers, we were served 15 course meals in traditional style, complete with low tables on tatami mats by a kimono-clad hostess. Here is just one of the dinners we had there:
- Crab legs with lemon
- Crayfish and crayfish salad
- Squash and cheese gratin in a mini baking dish
- Two kinds of sashimi (raw fish) and Sake (rice wine)
- Glazed grilled mackerel
- Tiny cubed potatoes with little flowers and fresh herbs
- Little green pickles
- Gelatinous vegetable cubes: mountain potato and konyaku (Devil’s Wart, which is a root)
- Crab dumpling in a hot pot (over live flame, like fondue heaters)
- Deep fried sesame chicken
- Broth with a little hard-boiled quail egg
- Soup in a paper dish over a hotpot with pork, tofu, sprouts, enoki mushrooms, with noodles and sweet brown broth
- Rice (surprise surprise)
- Green tea and beer
Japanese breakfasts were also about rice, smoked and raw fish, and thin strips of dried seaweed which one would roll up with rice and fish, cold pickled vegetables, miso (bean curd) soup and, if we were lucky, a mini yoghurt and some fruit. Lunch was about sushi, and udon noodles, or both, and tempura (battered, deep fried veggies). It soon seemed to us that the Japanese believe that you cannot eat too much white rice and fish. And their concept of variety is totally different from ours. When we arrived in Kanazawa after two weeks on the road eating fish and rice two-three times a day, we were deliriously happy to find a tiny Indonesian restaurant run by a friendly longhaired youth and his buddy who cooked delicious food.
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Bottoms Up
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What we liked about Japan was that there were toilets everywhere --– a true mark of a civilized country. There were public toilets, unlocked and syringe-free in parks, temples, train stations, and even on city streets. For the most part, they were clean, too. Having been given ‘Japanese potty training’ in Berkeley by veterans of Japanese travel, we were not surprised to see the floor level, oval-shaped porcelain bowl in many public places. We even knew to squat in the opposite direction one would think if one had experienced Turkish-style toilets in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
Even more fascinating were the enhanced western-style toilets that were in many hotels and homes. Not only were the toilet seats almost always heated and occasionally musical, but there was also a series of mysterious knobs, dials and buttons on the side of the toilet bowl, which one could experiment with at their peril. The functions were illustrated and came only with Japanese language instructions. One seemed to make warm water shoot up in one direction (bidet style) and another at a slightly different angle for more unisex usage. Additional buttons indicated a blow drier, but one was never sure which was which and it was hard, without some fearless experimentation, to determine the stop button. W had had the classic “boy, did I make a mess with those buttons” story on a previous trip. H didn’t have the courage to use them until the end.
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Hot Water
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An unforgettable part of the Japanese experience is the Onsen (a private spa versus a sento, which is a public bath). The Japanese are probably the most developed in the world when it comes to public bathing. The baths are not just for getting clean; they are for relaxing and unwinding with one’s family after a tough week, complete with bars, restaurants and lounges. The largest onsen we tried was in Sakai. W relished these hot water experiences. H was game to try this cultural experience less than 48 hours after arrival. There was a women’s side and a men’s side, each with curtain with undecipherable kanji characters, only distinguishable by the color of the curtain, which we eventually figured out that red was for women and blue for men. [W made an unexpected but one-time-only visit to the ladies’ changing room early in his visit.] Knowing that there was a high probability that she could make a huge cultural mistake, H studied carefully before the event, and then during locker room experience, did what everyone else did.
One disrobed in the dressing room, on dry tatami mats, and put away one’s clothes in the locker. Then one was to calmly and nonchalantly promenade to the showering area with naught but the little towel/washcloth. Inside, there were stand up showers, like we have at home, and many sit-down stations with a little stool, bucket, shampoo, soap and a hand held showerhead at each one. It resembled a giant hairdressing salon. There were mirrors that got all steamed up. The women scrubbed themselves and their children at the stations. Once everyone was clean, it then permissible to go into one of the many baths. There were hot tubs and super hot tubs. There were tubs with powerful jets for massaging every aching area, and tubs outside, to get the night air, and cool tubs to dunk in as well. Women could bathe in solitude or groups, gossiping or silent. No one spoke, or even stared at H’s ‘different’ appearance (but they did at W). The Japanese don’t have a problem with nudity, however, they are not allowed to show pubic hair in the media or in pornography.
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Quake Awake
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| We stayed at a ryokan in one of the older low-rise neighborhoods in Tokyo at the end of our trip. On our last morning in Japan, the innkeeper, whom had a live parrot and its poop permanently affixed to his left shoulder, invited us to an earthquake preparedness block party. We tried to tell him that we live in SF and know all about them, but ended up at this cultural event anyway. There were about 20 blue-uniformed firefighters standing in formation, listening to speeches by neighborhood officials. We were plied with free food (seafood stew and rice, and pounded rice for dessert) from a stand. When the speeches were over, there were activities that everyone could participate in: rice pounding, CPR training on a topless blonde Caucasian female dummy, apple dunking, and an earthquake simulator (on a flat bed truck) for kids. We thought that this would be a very good thing for the Bay Area to have, since we all know that the big one is coming. Japan’s most recent earthquake disaster was in Kobe, in 1995 in which 6,300 people perished. |
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Return to Roppongi
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Skyscrapers, city lights, and masses of people are the images that come to mind when Tokyo is mentioned. After two weeks in quiet countryside, we were actually ready for the mega-city scene. But as we only had one night in Tokyo, there wasn’t much time to get our fill of glitz. So, we chose to break our rice and fish diet by dining in hip and happening Roppongi.
When W was but a wee lad, he and his family lived in the Roppongi Hills for a year as ex-pats. They had a spectacular view of Tokyo. [One of his neighbors was a certain Mr. Honda, who at that time only manufactured motor scooters and cycles.] Since then, Roppongi had been through its ups and downs, but in 2003, a huge development was completed, and now it was the place to go on Friday night, to see the latest art exhibit, 1,000 feet up, and then view Tokyo at night at the Mori Museum and Tower, to eat exotic foreign food and watch ex-pats. Being a little homesick, we chose an American restaurant called ‘Roti’ and ate rotisserie chicken and cheesecake, which tasted heavenly. We sent our compliments to the Western chefs. Then we saw an art exhibit on ‘Berlin-Tokyo’ and the night view of Tokyo Tower (a slightly taller copy of the Eiffel Tower in Paris built in 1958).
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Krazy in Kamakura
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| Kamakura, a former military capital of Japan in the 1300s, and not far from Tokyo, sports many Zen temples and is a perfect day trip destination. After walking around this tourist haven (still with plenty of quiet corners and photo opportunities), we met a group of Japanese photographers with whom we had become acquainted last year in California. The Japanese photographers were all part of a club called ‘The Zone Group’, or, more accurately in H’s mind, the ‘Ansel Adams’ club. They were black and white film landscape photographers who worshiped (in a technical, geeky sort of way) not only Ansel Adams’ work, but also his darkroom method of developing prints. We met them at a cultural exchange at the house of the late Adams. His son and daughter-in-law were hosting the event, which included people showing their work (the Japanese, and some American protégés of Adams) and touring the house, including his darkroom, with a detailed, extremely technical explanation of Adams’ developing process. At the end of the tour, one of the Japanese photographers was so overcome with the fact that he was in his idol’s house that he unashamedly burst into tears. Six months later, W went to Japan in October 2005 and hooked up with some of these photographers when he was in Tokyo. |
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Back to the Future
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| And now back to our trip: We were in Kamakura, and the Ansel Adams’ club was having a club meeting at one of the members’ offices. They were talking about their upcoming annual trip to Yosemite National Park, which was, lo and behold, the same weekend that W was celebrating his 50th birthday – also at Yosemite. It was like a miniature reunion. They finished their meeting with us there. Then they took us out for exotic hors d’oeuvres at a restaurant called ‘Santa Fe’ which served interesting Japanese interpretations of American Southwestern food. |
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Yearning for Yosemite
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Fast forward again: It’s that weekend in Yosemite, May 18-22, 2006. The Japanese photographers have been in the park for almost a week. Their schedule goes like this: up at 5 am, out shooting photos by 6, and breaks only for eating until sundown. Then, after dinner, they held a meeting to discuss the day’s events and plan the following day. They had a photo exhibition in November to plan for, so not a moment could be wasted having fun, or, God forbid, relaxing.
So it was that W had 11 American guests and 11 Japanese guests at this birthday dinner at the Mountain Room in Yosemite Lodge. In a fascinating cultural exchange, all toasted W by saying “Kampai!” (or literally “drain the glass empty!”). For an encore, the Japanese dressed W up in a bright blue festival robe, tied a sash around his head and had fun photographing the end result. They were all photographers, after all. Everyone, whether they spoke English or not, had a great time.
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