Sunday, April 09, 2006

Pictures from the last week and a pop can full of grape jello

Well, the spring cherry blossoms are in full bloom - these past few days have been perfect for cherry blossom viewing and picture taking. Here are a few I took over the last few days:

The first four pictures were taken at Hachimanyama Park which has over 700 cherry trees and a big ugly tower in the middle of it. Here's a nice old cluster of blossoms:
Near the park's entrance is this beautiful old cherry tree that is helped along with a lattice framework and some support structures:

And here is our young Australian adventurer, Scott, climbing up to the blossoms. Michel and I have both commented on the fact that Scott has a way of walking into our photos (you'll see evidence of this again, further down):
This is a buddha statue to remember babies - from what I understand, it is a way to commemorate babies who were stillborn, died in infancy, or were aborted:
These next four pictures were taken at the Futaarayama Shrine in the center of town:
As you can see, this shrine - built about 1,600 years ago is a great way to escape the rather dull, Sovietesque architecture that makes up most of the city (you can see a bit of it peaking out from behind the entrance). For a great book on some of the more frightening aspects of Japanese modern culture and what is happening to the environment, read Alex Kerr's "Dogs and Demons: The Fall of Modern Japan."
Ah, there's Scott wandering into another photo. Scott loves cherry blossoms almost as much as he loves tequila:
Here's a close up of a blossom. This little flower transforms people around here - everyone goes out to the parks for hanami parties (cherry blossom viewing parties) and have large picnics and drink tons of sake and shochu:
Yesterday I finally found St. John's Anglican Church which I'd been looking for ever since I'd arrived. Well, it happens to be about three minutes away from my apartment by bicycle. I decided to attend church there this morning for Palm Sunday. The church is made from oya stone which is mined right here in little Ustunomiya. The inside of the church was really nice - a lot like many English Anglican churches I'd seen in Britain. This is the first church service I'd ever been to in my life where I had to remove my shoes before entering, but as that's a fairly normal thing to do whenever you enter many places in Japan, I wasn't surprised. The service was pretty much like the other Anglican/Episcopal services I'd been to except I couldn't understand the language. Because I have learned hiragana fairly well I can sing along with the hymns, but am a bit slow so I don't sing very loudly. Also, unless I recognize the hymn tune, I don't really know what I'm singing until I get to the "Amen" at the end which is in katakana, which I can't read, but which I can understand because katakana is used for foreign words in the Japanese language. I'll go back next week for Easter services. One of the ladies in the church spoke English fairly well (I should say amazingly well as my Japanese is crap) and told me that the other rector would be there next week and that he spoke English really well and had glob-trotted quite a bit. Here's the church:
After a stop home to change, I hopped on my bike and headed down to the JR train station where the buses also leave from. I grabbed a bus to the Utsunomiya Municipal Park of Nature and Arts - about a twenty minute bus ride. This turned out to be a great little outing for me as I got to see more grass and trees than I'd seen since I'd arrived. Here's a picture of a small pond on the museum grounds:
The exhibit was a retrospective of a Japanese artist called Yasutomo Watanabe - really great stuff. The main collection was good as well and I was happy to see some Chagall and this Magritte:
Here are some of the beautiful trees that I walked through and I wanted to take a picture of the beware of snakes signs I saw everywhere, but there were always people around and I felt stupid. I can't read the signs themselves, but they have this cartoon snake with eyes that look like 50s style cat glasses - like maybe they had "The Far Side" cartoon in mind when they drew this image. Anyway, here are the beautiful cedars and bamboo I walked through:
Here's a sepia tone version of the pond which came out great cuz the sun kinda haloed around the tops of the trees in a really cool way:
As I waited for the bus, I decided to get a little something to drink at the vending machine and I saw this can of grape jello. This seemed odd, but I had full faith in the Japanese - usually this sort of thing comes with a top that fully opens and a little spoon cleverly attached on the bottom of the cup. Well, I put in my coins and out came a pop can with grape jello in it. I opened it and put my mouth to it and nothing came out. So I began noisily slurping at it and thought how dumb I must look. I managed to slurp out about a third of the jello, when I decided to put my thumb over the opening and shake it until it was in small enough pieces to get through the opening. This worked, but man, what a silly concept:

5 comments:

Jean. said...

Great pictures, Matty.

I miss you like crazy--I'd do anything to be walking through cherry blossoms and eat-drinking grape Jell-O with you right now.

Kristin said...

I'm with Jean - I miss you so so much! Those cherry blossoms look so pretty I wish I was there! And I thought that one shrine was the "Futurama" shrine and I went "No way, I love Futureama!" then read it again and discovered that I'm just a reading retard. And I am perplexed by the whole jello in a can thing...especially since there is a spoon on the can...weird.

Heather Cady said...

Matty dear,

If you come over I will make you a whole pan of vanilla pudding cinnamon rolls. It might make you change your mind on the morality of bread machines.

And if I wanted to have to do all the extra steps to make bread, I wouldn't have bought a breadmaker :) I don't wanna. Hope we can still be friends.

Get thee to Spain.

Junebug

Liz said...

All those children and the buddha have little hats! At first, I thought they were flowers.

I've had Jell-O through a straw before, but that was on purpose.

short short said...

When I was in Ireland, we had a craving for hot dogs one day, and we finally found them...in a can. As in, non-perishable. How they did that, I don't know, but... gross.

Love the pictures! You continually make me want to pack up my things and travel around the world, Matt.