Apartment Sweet Apartment (aka, Better Homes and Gardens)

I mean, I never wanted a clean slate. I wanted a ragtag assortment of other people's junk so I could be creative with making it my own living space and then not feel too attached to it so that leaving it behind wouldn't be a big deal.

As you know, when I got here, there wasn't a lot of stuff. Over time, I accumulated stuff from leaving JETs and nonJETs alike, and bought stuff at the recycle shop because basically everything there is on sale. But my apartment was always kind of a work in progress, and I always kind of had the vague notion that I was going to do something with it, sometime.. or maybe I would never get around to it, but oh well...

But it bothered me, and I knew this when I spent an afternoon one day upon return from work measuring the rooms and furniture and cutting out scale models in graph paper so I could see what would fit where. I had gotten to the point where I had collected too much furniture.

Over the course of the time I've been here, I've also tried to make improvements to the "yard," as well as brought home lots of little houseplants to keep around. I've gotten compliments for being the only one to have anything alive in her house, and I always blame it on my mother.

Let us look at the photographic evidence: How Lem got her crap together.

Stage One: It Was Like That When I Got Here

The stuff: Bed, bookshelf, mirror, blue couch, end table, wire table, TV and stand. Fridge, table& chairs, and kitchen accessories (rice cooker, water heater).
The yard: despair

I really liked my predecessor, and so at first held to this strange belief, rather staunchly, that if it was good enough for her, it was good enough for me..! Not taking into consideration the fact that she really didn't live like this, with this setup and this furniture, not really. Since she was the only person leaving my year, she naturally would give her stay-another-year friends first crack at the household goods, and since they would not at that time be overwhelmed with all the furniture they could eat, I'm fairly sure everyone took something.

Still and all, the Spartan basics weren't so bad.

From Drop Box

I put a bunch of photos on the front of the fridge. Got a couple houseplants.


Laundry time







As for the yard, I had a strip of gravel and two dead trees. I remember reading the myth of Demeter and believing (it made sense to me, okay?) that the "barren season" of the year was winter. I mean, that's when it's too cold to grow. That's why harvest festivals are in the fall, etc. But actually, in Greece and other Mediterranean places, and in lots of places it turns out, sometimes the hardest time to grow things is the summer under that punishing sun. So far, my yard has always looked like crap in the summer, not only when I first arrived, but also after my first year. It's just too hot for many things to live out there.


I love this photo. Two dead trees and a PVC pipe.


View from the road.


Dead tree as seen from bedroom window.

AUTUMN 2009: The Recycle Shop is Your Friend

Acquisitions: desk, more shelves, assorted cute things (like the clock, sitting cushions)

Moves: bookshelf into living room, fridge to corner of kitchen, giant trashcans to outside

Yard: Let's Garden the Shit Out of It

Through the fall, I sort of settled down and collected a few things it was nice to have.

Here's the video walkthrough from that time.


October, I was proud of my ikebana, and this shows the clock on top of the TV.


More ikebana leftovers, but this is sitting on top of some of the new shelving I got for the kitchen. This means that by now (October 9th, 2009), I had moved the fridge and trashcans as well as put my dishes on this shelf.


The yard got its first dose of gardening one day when Julie and I made a hundred dollar trip to Agro Garden.


Post-Thanksgiving consumption of leftovers, 2009. You can see the bookshelf and fridge have been moved.

WINTER 2009-2010: Baby, It's Cold Outside. And Inside.

Acquisitions: Heaters (kerosene, electric, and hot water bottles). Odds and ends.

Changes: basically no

January, photographs of snow show yard unchanged. Still got dead trees, PVC, and a little garden.


February. Desk still in bedroom, but covered with houseplants.


February, my living room can still host the whole town.

From 2010_02_16

SPRING 2010: Dibs

Acquisitions: bicycle, more planters. Kotatsu and big white couch, lamp (George left Japan).

Moves: blue couch into bedroom

Yard status: blooming

George left Japan in the spring and I bought a bunch of his stuff.

More of the same. Garden still alive, PVC pipe finally moved, trees still dead.


In April, the tulips bloomed through the pansies.


The new/old kotatsu is my new source of happiness.


Couch, likewise.


To compliment the interior's new look, I improved other stuff too.




SUMMER 2010: The apartment feels brighter and more awesome this way.

Acquisitions: Heke's green chair, the promise of Julie's many planters.

Yard status: tomatoes, and pumpkin vine.. but then when I left for 2.5 weeks, everything died.

When we turn the kotatsu sideways against the wall, we can still have a million people playing games.


But when the old JETs were leaving and getting rid of their stuff, I managed to buy Heke's chair (and dehumidifyer), and I got Lana's spice rack. This meant moving the white couch to make room. I also bought a floor chair to go with the kotatsu.

Tomatoes.


I took this photo to show the little green frog, but you can see that the couch has been pushed to the window.


This was about the time I started looking for ways to rearrange or possibly get rid of something, since things didn't quite fit.

To Present:
Then, one day in the fall, we went to visit Lauren who had totally redone her apartment from the way it had been with her predecessor. She'd installed all kinds of mood lighting and arranged things in a way that fit her personality.

I went home and tore my place apart. It took me a long time to put back together, but once I did, I went to the recycle shop again to get lamps. I realized that my living room was set up to focus on the TV, which was stupid, as I kept telling the NHK lady, I don't watch TV, not even DVDs all that often, and there was no reason for that to be the most important feature of the room!

I inherited Julie's planters and slowly but surely spent a little time here and a little time there filling them up. My first dead tree fell down in a storm, so I kicked the other one down and tore it out of the ground with my gloved hands. I got a sweet olive tree (though very small) to put in the spot of the first dead tree, and a nandina to go in the spot of the second. I reinstalled pansies.

Now, my house looks like this! (click on it to go to the album and see them at your own pace)



The only difference being that since these were taken, I have expanded the ground garden a bit.

From 2010_12_22

From 2010_12_22

Here are my "Christmas morning snow photos" for that:

Things to do before dying:

this winter vacation

Eat fugu
Go to oldest capital of Japan (Nara)
Hit Kyoto and Tokyo while at it, in order
See an emperor in real life
Make a New Year visit to a significant shrine
Visit a tropical paradise
Fly through best airport in world

I'm going to do a post soon with photos from my new furniture arrangement. It's funny because it almost resembles my very first arrangement again, only.. not.

So just for old time's sake, here's this: http://eminihonde.blogspot.com/2009/09/inside-my-domicile.html, for kicks, because my house in September had FAR LESS CRAP IN IT than it does now.. my challenge lately has been making it all fit.

And lest we forget what my yard once looked like, I give you this and this.


Because I hope the new images of this year's winter garden will subsequently blow your mind.

Luminarie

I can't believe it's been a full week since I even looked at this blog. Alas. This is the problem, with this time of year as well as most of June and July. My trained inner seasonal clock says, we should be out of school. Or, at least the kids should, and my days should be pointless go to work and sit there days, which I could happily fill with trip planning, blogging, studying Japanese, keeping up with my reading, corresponding, and Christmas (eek, er, NEW YEAR) cards.

Alas.

We're still having class, I'm still planning lessons for elementary, making materials, trying to put together presentations about Christmas. It's kind of like rubbing salt in the wound, 'round here.. Thanksgiving, now Christmas... please make a presentation and a game about this holiday you don't actually get to go participate in. So I grumble, and I do it, and then I'm standing in the classroom, listening to Mariah Carey for the 31st time in three days, and I suddenly feel in the Christmas spirit. But by then it is December 23rd or something crazy like that and my inner clock is just confused as hell.

ANYway, last weekend, Adina and I went Christmas shopping and then to Kobe Luminarie. Although Luminarie seems a lot like Christmas lights, it is actually a memorial to the Hanshin earthquake victims, 1995.

It was the sort of thing that would have bothered me more not to see than actually gratified to see, if that makes sense. It was pretty, and nice, but really crowded (a theme, Japan?) and ruthlessly crowd-controlled by megaphone-toting, sign-holding policepeople. It was worth going just to see this, actually.. they sent us all through a long roundabout walk all around the area, sort of like when you are waiting in line at Six Flags.. then, much like Six Flags, the actual attraction was pretty short, compared to the waiting part.

But it was pretty, and it was cool, and I did get some Christmas presents (mostly in Himeji, and including a couple things for myself ^_^).

From 2010_12_12

From 2010_12_12

From 2010_12_12

Monkey Massage Weekend

Monkey Massage Weekend has been in the works for a long time. The concept arose when a Himeji-dwelling ALT friend asked what there was to do in Shiso. He wasn’t trying to be a jerk, he really wanted to know. So I told him we had a sweet monkey park (to which I’d never been). At some point he was talking about a really bad massage he'd got, and I assured him that the massage lady I saw in Shiso was much better than he’d experienced in his city. He suggested that one of these days, we make a venture out of it, and enjoy a few of the many things Shiso has to offer.

It’s not easy for people living in actual cities to get out to Shiso, and I appreciate that. Most cities have trains, but Shiso does not. Which means you have to take a (pretty expensive) bus out here, then maybe another one to wherever in town you want to go.

After failing to execute monkey/massage weekend through the summer, we decided on November 14^th. I was later invited by my principal to a festival up in Somegochi (one of my favorite places), so it was added to the day’s itinerary.

It was a cool, hazy morning high up the Some valley when we hit the festival. There was shishinabe (wild boar stew):

From 2010_11_14

Mochi-makin' (pounding rice into a sort of sticky awesomeness):

From 2010_11_14

and performances by a group of basically all the girl students at my small elementary school:

From 2010_11_14

For not being associated to monkeys, nor massages, this festival was a pretty sweet addition to monkey massage weekend.

The monkey park is an adjunct to a temple somewhere on the way to Chikusa. Armed with no more knowledge than basically that, we did manage to find the place. It's pretty well signed. I'll share some of our fun photos, but as usual, if you click the link and follow it back to the album, there's a whole slew of awesome there for you to peruse.

First, although you've seen it all by now, remember that this is backwards blogging, so I hadn't been to Momiji-Yama yet, nor Kyoto. That said, the fall color at monkey park that day was beautiful!

From 2010_11_14

From 2010_11_14

From 2010_11_14

The park itself appeared as if out of nothing amongst the trees. There is no compelling force keeping the monkeys there, other than the presence of provided food and shelter, which are pretty compelling.

From 2010_11_14

From 2010_11_14

I like this one because if you look close, you can see the little one's mouth open in protest as its mother gives it a good face-scrubbin':

From 2010_11_14

That one is part of a whole washing-the-baby-monkey series which I enjoy quite a lot.

Other fun activities include feeding the monkeys:

From 2010_11_14

This one is just adorable:

From 2010_11_14

This seemed wildly appropriate on Monkey Massage Weekend, as it appears the monkeys are massaging (grooming) one another:

From 2010_11_14

Then. It was feeding time. At which point more hilarity ensued than I can describe. So please enjoy my videos.

First, a general pan, and the spotting of the Monkey King (who was given his own food pile by the park keeper):

From 2010_11_14

More little monkeys stole food from the big guy, until one tiny monkey got thrown by its head over the edge of that little wall you see there. It was incredible.

We hoped for an encore.. can you blame us?

From 2010_11_14

I was refocusing my camera so I just barely caught---

From 2010_11_14

There aren't photos of the massage, that would just have been awkward. In summary, come to Shiso, it's pretty awesome.

Food for Fear

In the morning before work I generally use the internet a little bit. Check the weather, maybe my horoscope, glance at email. I peruse a bit more carefully if I’m going to elementary school that day and will thus be without internet access (or, really, time to look at the internet anyway). This morning I downloaded some stuff I had been ignoring for a while.. my winter trip flight itinerary (in case I wanted to do some plannin’ in my downtime at school), the recontracting forms I’m not sure are for me (they might be just for high-school JETs).

Those damn things are due February 4th! That’s like, way soon.

As I was driving to school today (totally against the rules, but I can’t find my bus card, and the buses would be too late to make my connections anyway because of construction down by the river) I watched the wind tear through the woods and toss leaves around, stared at the tree branches lifting over grey stone garden walls, and considered that I might stay another year. Of course this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and my leanings have changed more deeply than I’d thought they might.

Being away for another year would be hard. But for me, “it’s difficult” almost goes on the list of reasons to do a thing, rather than not do it. I’m a bit ruthless when it comes to what I expect of myself. The idea of turning away from a task, project, or anything because “it’s hard” is appalling. I expect far greater things of myself than that.

Although doing something just because it’s difficult is pretty stupid, I sometimes think that I operate that way anyway. Maybe I think things that are difficult are more meaningful because they come with struggle. You get out of a thing what you put into it.. you know, chemical equations, college, life, etc. So not only have you gotta give what you do your best shot, you’ve got to be in a place that demands a lot of you.

Until, of course, you grow out of that horrible phase of treating yourself so harshly, and give yourself a damn break.

You may recall a weekend in September when I went white water rafting. There was a point at which people got out of their boats and jumped off high rocks into the water. It took only a little coaxing from the raft guides to get me onto the third rock (the highest, I guess? I think there was one more higher) before anyone had jumped off of it yet. It was absolutely freaking petrifying. The prep, the jump, the fall, the water-hitting, every moment of the experience of flinging myself from a rock 12 meters above the river was a study of how to be EmLem, scared.

I knew it would be, because of a day I spent at the Lawrence pool when I lived there. One afternoon at the tail end of summer, I took myself there while Dre was at work. I lay about, disappointed that the lily pads were not only too small for me, but closed. I shrugged and thought I’d try the high dive. I was surprised to find that it was terrifying. There’s something horrible about the moment of free fall, when you’re not strapped to anything or belted in to any contraption, just you, mostly naked, falling through the air. I knew, logically, that it was safe. I knew this even better after doing it.. there I was, I’d survived, there was no harm (besides bathing suit wedgie). But after doing it once, the memory of that moment of midair panic was much more salient. I pulled myself out of the water, wanting to do it again; I was so interested in my own terror that I wanted to recreate that contrast between intense fear and known safety.

That day, I jumped off the high dive again and again. The midair fear never lessened, never went away. It was much more intense above the river because I had way too much time to look down, realize what I was doing, and not have a single ounce of control over any of it at that point.

And the reason I do these things to myself, I think, is partly that one of my greatest fears is fear. And I know that’s kind of played out by now. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, etc. Harry Potter and the boggart in the wardrobe, so on and so forth. But what I’ve always been afraid of is missing out on something, missing an opportunity, wasting something, something like time, like life. And I know somewhere deep that fear is one ugly bastard that will stand between you and the fulfillment of your potential, between you and the breadth and depth of experience you should be able to have in your life. And I won’t have it. I won’t stand for that shit. I have to defy fear because I need to know I can best it daily. If I can’t beat it in the little things, how on earth can I hope to top it in the big?

I’m sure that’s all very ironic. The end result is, sometimes I work harder, not smarter. Sometimes I do stuff just because it’s hard.

It Didn't Suck.

My assessment of KobeConference: well, it didn't suck! This year felt a lot more productive than last year did. At no point did I actively wish to remove my eyeballs with my pencil point. They actually responded to a lot of last year's issues about both the conference and the JET experience as a whole. They tried to seminar up some teacher training, and there was a lot more group discussion, a lot less two-hours-of-the-same-demonstration-fifteen-times.

So that was, for the most part, an unexpected success.

As for what I hoped to get out of KobeConference, that too was greatly successful.

I got to wear "professional" looking clothes that hadn't been worn in quite some time. Including one outfit which, I kid you not, I've kept for like ten years (then brought to Japan?) with the intention of playing dress-up. Or professional conference. Whatever.

Kobe is a pretty cool city. It's international without being insanely huge; it's pretty, and there are things to do.

One of the views from our KobeConference venue:

From 2010_11_18

On the streets Thursday night:

From 2010_11_18

Just like home:

From 2010_11_18

Also, as you may be aware (unless you live under a rock in a cave under the sea), Harry Potter opened on Friday, November 19th, so M and I spent our lunch hour running back to Sannomiya to secure tickets for that night's show. It was worth the scolding for being late...

Being more international than Shiso means Kobe has a wider variety of food choices. Like this tasty Spanish joint, which was a bit pricey because it was in the building where our movie was going to be. Priorities, people.

From 2010_11_19

The movie itself was, of course, nothing short of wonderful. As a new record, I was in tears in the first four minutes.

Yes that's a Gryffindor tie on Miriam. And a full-scale Ravenclaw getup on yours truly... Caito has a time-turner, and Kameron's in Slytherin sweater disguise.

From 2010_11_19

Finally, our post-conference proximity to Kobe-Sanda outlets made for a beautiful and exhausting day of shopping until we died of our wounds. My favorite purchases were a sweater approximately the color of my soul (to replace the scarf the actual color of my soul which I bought in Florence and then lost sometime after), and a beautiful long black coat that I have not worn out yet because even though it's cold, it's not THAT damn cold yet.



It looks even better on me than on this hanger..!