Just about all of my words on screen effort these days goes into professional writing. I have no energy for blogging! Also, life is pretty boring when you are dissertating. The couple of hours I take off to recoup can take me to new places and yummy food, but I just don’t have the wherewithal to blog about it.

I’ll get back to it sooner or later! Probably after the draft of chapter one. Right now I’m about a third of the way into that bad boy, I’m finishing up some writing for a publication, and I’ve got a personal deadline to prep another article to send out.

In the meantime, I have kept up with the ol’ photography. I put the images up here.

xoxo

HDR plus lomo plus desaturate

I’ve loved looking at lomo photos for a long time now. Last week, while browsing through cameras and lenses and filters in Tokyo camera stores with Jess, I found a lomo camera display.
Since they are cheap cameras, I was very VERY tempted. But, as Jess pointed out, who has the money for print film these days? Good point.

Instead, inspired, I browsed around for Photoshop processing techniques to obtain lomo looks digitally.

It’s really not very hard at all.

I’ve learned a few things in this experiment. Really, the most important and obvious is that not all photos make good lomo photos. This is, actually, great. Using new processing techniques is just like working with new equipment in that you start to see and shoot differently given what you are working with. (Maybe it’s even better since it’s free!) My camera eye tends to focus on the simple contrast of shaded reds and greens, which is perfect for woodsy Shinto shrines, but not great for the city with its at times drab wash or color cacophony. Although my photos might suggest otherwise, I actually spend most of my time in the great labyrinth of Tokyo, and therefore spend a great deal of time not taking photos.

The simple combination of reds and greens set in shadows doesn’t really work for me in lomo processing. On the other hand, blues and yellows and really just shots involving a larger color palate in contrasty light look great with lomo processing.

I feel inspired to do some metropolitan wandering.

And then doom hiking.

OUR TENT IS NOT WATERPROOF.

HOW MANY TIMES MUST WE LEARN THIS SAD, SLEEPLESS, AND STUPID LESSON?

At least two, apparently. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

So we went camping in the Japanese rainy season (tsuyu) in our non-waterproof tent.

Oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

We went camping.

Look at those plucky high spirits shining through a haze of waking up after five hours of sleep to catch five different trains! Five and five! Such an auspicious beginning! What could go wrong?

Look at this endearing little shopping arcade at Chichibu Station, our third transfer! Bright and colorful banners!

Such cheerful souvenir stalls! How sad we were to pass by these on our way to the hike. Since we were going to be returning on a different route after two solid days of trekking, we would never see these adorable little shops ever again!
Or so we thought.

Okay, enough inane hysteria.

Josh and I made a plan to go on a two-day hiking trip, starting at Owa, camping overnight at the top of Mt. Kumotori (雲取山) (in our tent), and finishing at Okutama.

Mt. Kumotori…here..let me crack open my water logged Hiking in Japan Lonely Planet guidebook for the most accurate reference…”sits on the three-way prefectural border of Yamanashi, Saitama, and Tokyo and lies almost directly west, and at the western-most extent, of Tokyo’s metropolitan district. It’s hard to believe you’re officially in Tokyo when you’re up on the peak.”

Here’s a map of part of the route. There is a second page, but I’m not going to show you because it’s not going to matter.

Seasoned campers and hikers that we are, we prepped carefully for our trip.
Among other things, we bought a variety of delicious snacks, packed ingredients for curry (to try out the Japanese way of campfood), made penne with pesto the night before for lunch on the go, smartly arranged our packs with the bare minimum of gear, CHECKED THE WEATHER FORECAST, charted the train connections, and, here we get to it, sprayed down our tent with a can of waterproofing agent because, as we learned one eventful night in Spain last year, the waterproof coating on both our rain fly and our tent no longer does the job. We have subsequently learned to make sure via a trial run that the waterproofing agent is legit and that the application is successful. Live, learn, and lament.

When I checked the weather forecast, not only were we to have sunny and clear skies, but the night temperature would be high enough so that Josh would not have to pack his sleeping bag. Mistake. Since I am exothermic and am therefore an unreliable and fallible source of body heat, I always have to pack my sleeping bag. My waterproof sleeping bag. Godsend.

Other than the obvious betrayal of the weather forecast, there is the matter of the accuracy of the Lonely Planet series to contend with first.

I could figure out our way from Ryogoku (where we live in Tokyo) to Mitsumine-guchi station via the train lines, but the information on how to get from Mitsumine-guchi station to the actual trailhead was rather unclear.

“From [Mitsumine-guchi] catch a bus to Owa at the bottom of the cable-car (and the start of the hike for those who want to walk). There are plenty of buses as this is how the cable-car gets its clients.”

I’m going to repeat part of that again because I am hopelessly dramatic.

“and the start of the hike for those who want to walk.”

Of course I want to walk! I don’t believe in cable cars! Tell me, venerable Lonely Planet, how long and what kind of a hike can I expect?

“The first 2km of the hike is virtually flat, as you amble through the Mistumine-jinja complex. If you hiked up the 1.5 hours from the bottom, you probably don’t need the warm up.”

Okay, thanks, LP.

But, I don’t trust the Lonely Planet and so I looked up Japanese language websites on the hike. And this is where the trouble started. Some websites told me that the cable car actually started from Mitsumine-guchi. Some told me that there was a train to Owa. Some seemed to suggest a magical fairy dust connection between Mitsumine-guchi and the Mitsumine-jinja complex, as if they were the same place.

There was naught to do but play it by ear.

If you have found this blog entry in search of information on hiking Kumotori-san from the Owa access point, let me tell you this:

There is a bus from Mitsumine-guchi station. You can get off at Owa (300 yen). From there, you can hike up to Mitsumine-jinja.
DO NOT DO THIS.
The trail is difficult – particularly with packs, which I assume you will be doing as it is a two-day trek – and takes three hours.
The last part of the trail disappears entirely and you will be walking on a dauntingly vertical gravel road. The experience of wondering how on earth a car or truck drives up it is not worth the actual endeaver.
THERE IS NO CABLE CAR STATION AT OWA.
DO NOT STOP AT OWA.
DO NOT COLLECT TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS.

There is a bus from Mitsumine-guchi that goes all the way up to Mitsumine-jinja. It costs 650 (690? I can’t quite recall) yen. Start your hike from Mitsumine-jinja. Actually, you don’t even have to take the train all the way to Mitsumine-guchi. Take the bus from Chichibu Station. It costs 950 yen.

My job here is done.

But just in case you think you are missing out on an exhausting three-hour hike at a relentless grade up 900 meters that will eat up your day time and prevent you from reaching your campground goal before dark, here are some pictures to save you a world of pain. Live vicariously!

The following picture was taken at eye level, to give a sense of the incline grade:

As you can see, by the time we got to the top, we were walking in clouds…which…I will begrudgingly admit was extremely cool. On the one hand, walking through the shrine complex of Mitsumine-jinja shrouded in enigmatic clouds was absolutely perfect. On the other hand, what are you likely to see if you scale a mountain peak ensorcelled with little to no visibility?

Mitsumine-jinja and the campground in Part Two.

Did you know that there was a World Cup soccer tournament recently? It’s true! And the world learned of the South African noise called the vuvuzela, learned how to spell it, learned how to hate it, learned how to mute it, learned how to quickly mass market it, and then learned how to love it. Really, it was a heartwarming coming of age narrative where everybody won, especially Spain.
In all sincerity, I heart the apocalypse heralding vuvuzela.

Anyway. There was some World Cupage.

You might think that Tokyo, the most populous city in the world, would have a large number of drinking establishments, watering holes, pubs, cantinas, taprooms, rathskellers…you know, bars.
And you would be right!
You also might also think that in Tokyo, the most populous city in the world replete with overflowing alcohol and state of the art technology, you could just pop into any number of multitudinous sports bars or pubs or izekaya and catch a world cup game on some kind of high falutin’ plasma teevee.
You would be wrong! But not about the teevee!

Maybe precisely because Tokyo is the most populous city in the world, or maybe because it is also the most bureaucratic city in the world, you cannot simply step out to catch a game at a bar. No, you need a ticket.

Because the idea or practice of needing a ticket to get into a local bar is completely anathema to our American can-do go-anywhere minds, Josh, Pat, and I naively tried to walk into a bar and were rather discourteously turned away from the Japan v Netherlands game. Not that the doorman was discourteous, but I believe we were probably discourteous about being barred entry to a public pub bar. Instead, we threw a great home viewing turned balcony party with zealous fervor and tremendous spite. Indignity is my new(ish) spice of life! However, to be honest, we did this after being turned away from three bars: after the first “you need a ticket” rejection, we refused to believe that such a stupid practice was city-wide systematic.
It was.

Oh ho ho were we prepared for the Japan v Paraguay game a week later!

We bought tickets the day before the game: 2000 yen per person granted entry, three drink tickets, and a snack cup. Not, actually, a bad deal!

Josh and Pat were super extra prepared with their Japan jerseys. Here they are waiting in line to get into the sports bar. Yes. I said waiting in line to get into a sports bar.

As vegetarians, we got lucky: the snack cups were friendly!

Deep fried pasta sticks coated with a salty, garlic pepperoncini glaze. I did not say that they were health friendly. I will say that they were delicious friendly. I will swear to that in a court of law.

I ate all of mine. I probably at a fair amount of Josh’s. And, after our standing table crowded and snack cups of the drunken masses gathered on its surface, I surreptitiously ate a fair amount of my neighbors’.

The thievery was no great feat on my part and it was fairly widely practiced by all. Look, three drink tickets is enough to get a crowded Japanese bar sharing and caring. And when I say crowded, I mean packed.

By the start of the game, the whole ticket thing seemed far less ridiculous and overtly necessary.

By the second half, the enthusiastic throng got increasingly more blurry. (three drink tickets)

And increasingly more vuvuzela-y.

And by overtime, increasingly more worried.

Ultimately, it was a bit of shame to see Japan lose on PKs (ooh, look how much I’ve learned about soccer!), but what was remarkable was the camaraderie of the spectators despite losing the game.

In general, I’m now convinced that watching sports in public in Japan is The Best Thing Ever.

I actually really dislike watching sports in the States. There’s something about the cocktail of aggression, sexism, and homophobia slewed by most every spectatorial source – from the shouting fans to the supporting advertisements expressing the emasculation of the average Joe by his Ball and Chain wife – that just doesn’t do anything positive for me.

In Japan, however, the team spirit, ingrained and nurtured throughout years of standardized schooling, is ASTOUNDING. Granted, I am basing my opinion of an entire country’s spectatorship on a solitary experience in a British sports bar in Kinshicho, but still, I say, still! Half of Japan was in that tiny bar!

Everyone in the joint hooted and hollared for their fellahs when they marched on the field, but they also clapped for the opposing team’s players, albeit not quite so boisterously.
If a player missed a goal or the ref called against Team Japan, there wasn’t any booing or screaming or rioting. Nobody died and everybody kept their clothes on. It was just, “aw” and more applause to commend the players on Team Japan for trying their best. What the what?! So Awesome.
And when Japan lost, of course the bar was a little downhearted, but after the initial wave of disappointment passed, more applause for both teams.

Oh My Gosh It’s Almost Like A Spirit of Sportsmanship.

Additionally, there were a number of group oriented cheers and mannerisms for specific players, plays, and situations. I’m not a soccer expert, or, really, enthusiast or even a dabbler, really more of a passerby, but I sure do know some soccer choreography. Now.

Much of it involves waving your arms in the air, which turns out to be extremely awesome and I think I have a degree in it because I’m very good at it. I may have missed the boat with this whole Japanese Film thing. Who knew?

I think I’ma gonna go watch baseball next.