💥 May 2035 年5月
- Nigel
- May 9
- 8 min read
Breaking News..........
"....Asteroid hits planet earth. Aliens land, but move on quickly......."
ニュース........小惑星が地球に衝突。エイリアンは着陸するも、すぐに立ち去る……
"..............nothing there. Only a half scorched sign in a desert saying something like MAKE AMER....and the letters TRU.....did this mean Truth or Trump? Aliens find no correlation between the two words. However, fragments of an old system called the "internet" revealed signs of more productive human activity........good enough to post "online" 👉......................
……何もない。砂漠に半分焦げた看板があって、「MAKE AMER（アメリカを作ろう）」みたいなことが書いてあるだけ…そして「TRU」の文字…これは真実を意味するのか、それともトランプを意味するのか？彼／彼女／それは重要な人物だったのか？宇宙人はこの二つの言葉に相関関係を見いだせなかった。しかし、「インターネット」と呼ばれる古いシステムの断片から、より生産的な人間の活動の痕跡が見つかった……「オンライン」に投稿できるほどだ.........👉……..............
⛩️
Japan: Flashback
2025
日本：回顧
Der Rückblick
I found myself enrolled for a Suiboku (Ink Wash Painting) lesson in a school in Tsurumi, Tokyo. The artist sort of assumed I could speak fluent Japanese, so I probably lost many of the hints he gave. However he was very complimentary about my bamboo drawing....
That's his drawing, which he knocked off in about a minute. I started practising with just the stems, not the leaves.....
With a couple of deft strokes, he "improved" my bamboo. Stuck it up on the whiteboard and photographed it!
Meanwhile a group of musicians (Aki さん - Cello, Takako さん- Flute, Ayakoさん - Mezzo Soprano) were "transcending boundaries" in their experimental Minorite concert in Koto City. They were not painting, oh no, they were tearing! This piece (by Benjamin Patterson) was all about doing just that - with different sorts of paper. I closed my eyes and let my imagination run riot. The audience loved it.
The contemporary music scene is alive and well in Tokyo.
Japan is an island archipelago. The Sea of Japan on the West, the Pacific Ocean on the East. Almost every town or village on the coast has a harbour with a fishing fleet. So it's no surprise that fish and seafood are BIG here. My teacher gave me this charming hand cloth...I now have to learn all these names 😂.........
But here's the real thing.......Tuna with ginger and onion......😋
In the Meiji era, the first breweries opened in Yokohama. And soon the Japanese were experimenting with their own brews. Asahi recently invented the "Extra Dry", a beer with a very clear, clean taste that did not interfere with the delicate subleties of Sushi. I actually prefer Kirin, which is more like a European lager.......
Always nicely presented........The cheesecake here is made after a recipe from the wife of well-known Yokohama author Osaragi Jiro......
and this is just in a station café at Sendai - carrot cake.....delicious.....
I love going to the wilder parts of the coast. The sand can be quite dark, due to its volcanic origin. It's soft underfoot....
The first European botanists must have been astounded when they reached the shores of Japan. I was lucky to witness the cherry blossoms.....in town...
in the countryside......
at temples......
or just about anywhere in fact......
Then came the camelias. The pinkish-red flowers adorn the forests. You walk through carpets of spent blooms on the ground.....
Then it was the peonies turn.......
.....and in my last week as I walked in the park at Motomachi, Yokohama, these irises were on every corner - in all colours.....
....and walking around the football stadium in Hodogaya there were whole banks of Azalias...
and other unknown (to me) trees......
...and if you are crazy enough to go to the Ashikaga Flower Park (Tochigi) in the first holiday of Golden Week........Wisteria
Anyone for Wisteria Ice Cream?
What's this? In 2019 a typhoon ripped up a tree on the "bluff" in Yokohama. Underneath was a very un-Japanese foundation. The local council decided to leave it there as a memorial, as it was evidently a western-style house which had been destroyed during the Great Kanto Earthquake.
The calm after the storm: Yokohama 1923
History is everywhere here. Just south of Yokohama is Yokosuka, near where the American Admiral Perry landed in 1853. Lucky he didn't arrive 50 years later, or he would have been met by this: The warship Mikasa. It was built in 1902 and brought from Vickers of Barrow-in-Furness in the UK for the Imperial Japanese Navy. It sunk a few Russian ships in its time.
In the event, Perry passed by Sarushima Island, and arrogantly re-named it "Perry Island". Not well received. It had been a gun battery for the Tokugawa Shogunate.
Meanwhile the old undisturbed Japan was going about its feudal ways in the hills of Gifu and Nagano. A house on the Nakasendo way.....
...and the burial sites of the prehistoric Jomon culture were yet to be excavated.
It is much harder to find the past in the sprawling metropolis of Tokyo. I took this picture from near the Tokyo Skytree. It shows Sumida Ward with the Sumida river: well known to Katsushika Hokusai ( 葛飾 北斎 ) the famous Ukiyo-e artist. Tokyo throbs. It buzzes. It works.
Back to Yokohama.
Along with Kobe, it was one of the first ports to open up to western traffic. But these first westerners were not artists or idealists. They were businessmen ("Merchants"). And there were lots of sailors who had been cooped up in steam ships for too long ⚓. Two cultures clashed. It was a chaotic and tense period. The British and American governments asked the Japanese authorities to build a "pleasure zone", which acted as a buffer between the port and the town. Nowadays tourists arrive on cruise ships or on the Tokaido Shinkansen🚅 . The buffer zone (aka red light district) has since disappeared, in part due to the earthquake and the subsequent fire bombing in WWII twenty year later. Yokohama has been through a lot.
A Norwegian cruise ship docked at the Osambashi pier
An unusual memorial in Yamashita Park - the park itself being created on the waterfront with rubble from the 1923 destruction .......
People.......have to work. Although distance working (Zaitaku Kinmu 在宅勤務 ) has become much more common after Covid.
But I feel someone had fun making this sign. A sense of humour for a dangerous path....(near Tsumago-juku, Nagano Prefecture).
Peoples' needs.......a vending machine, a postbox, and a launderette ("coin laundry") . What more do you need?
Every year children have a special day :"Kodomo no hi" on May 5th. But the carp streamers (Koinobori) are already flying here in Nagoya. Originally Tango no Sekku, the day has been celebrated since the Kamakura period in the 12thc. The black carp (Magoi) represents the father, the red one (Higoi) the mother. All the others are the children.....
But the children are not always happy......
Kotaro-chan : "what's up big sister?"
Meiko-chan: "I want my violin!"......."ah.....that's more like it.......👍"
People are helpful. Here a shop owner helps us find the way back to our hiking trail in Miyagi....
Furry friends. "I will sleep where I will. For I am a cat. My name is Toro-chan"
"I will reign from here.....for I am the queen......"
Foreigners photograph the oddest things.......Behind the Tsunami wall on the Miyagiolle trail....
The Anglican - Episcopal church in Yokohama. Apparently only 1.5% of the Japanese population profess to be Christian.......
Buddhism: Jizo are the guardian deities for children and travellers. They are properly called “Jizo Bosatsu”, originating in ancient India where in Sanskrit they are called Ksitigarbha , which means earth womb.....bet you didn't know that....
Buddhism has many interpretations and factions... here at the Rinnjo Buddhist temple in Sendai. A Zen stone garden.
"...........Religion in Japan is manifested primarily in Shinto and in Buddhism, the two main faiths, which Japanese people often practice simultaneously. According to estimates, as many as 70% of the populace follow Shinto rituals to some degree, worshiping ancestors and spirits at domestic altars and public shrines. An almost equally high number is reported as Buddhist....." (Wiki)
「……日本の宗教は、主に神道と仏教という二つの主要な信仰に表れており、日本人はしばしばこの二つを同時に信仰しています。推計によると、国民の70%が何らかの形で神道の儀式に従い、家庭の神棚や公共の神社で祖霊や霊を祀っています。ほぼ同数の人々が仏教徒であると報告されています……」（Wikipedia）
...a local Shinto shrine in Hodogaya.....
Atsuta Jingu, Shinto hall in Nagoya.....
The entrance to the Aoba Shinto shrine in Sendai - tucked between the houses like a jewel in a nondescript urban landscape.....
Offering a prayer.......🙏
Fuji-san 🗻 is certainly regarded as sacred. I go for a walk behind my house and there it is on the horizon. But the iphone camera with its wide angle lens does not do it justice. On another day I catch a surprising glimpse of it from the carpark. It is so much bigger than anything else on the landscape, appearing like the backdrop to a stage. It is an awe-inspiring sight. And then it disappears again. Like some magnificent but fickle god.
On civil engineering: I've been recording these manholes for a palaeographer at Göttingen University. However they are hardly phD material to be recommended to students. They are what is called fun.....not often seen in the corridors of town councils...
Japan's history is one of wooden buildings - 🪵 So it's no surprise that fire-fighting has a long history. And how typical to use a cartoon-like figure to convey an important message. A nice thing to have in the pavement! (it's a fire hydrant). I must suggest this to the Langen Bürgermeister......
And technology. Pride in the old...Another view of that pre-Dreadnought battleship Mikasa...
and in the new....the monorail in Tachikawa, Saitama.
An express train pulls in at Asakusa, Tokyo...
And the everyday practical things - buses that arrive on time on rainy days.....
Yamaha Music Store, Yokohama. Sound experiences......🎵
A synthesis of philosophy, art and sport: Archery 🏹.
The tilting vessel: an illustration of one of Confucius’s principles where a bucket is suspended from two chains and needs to be filled with exactly 80% of its capacity in water to come to perfect balance — this is where the Japanese expression “hara hachibu” or “eat until you’re 80% full” comes from........I took this picture at Ashikaga Gakko in Tochigi - Japan's oldest university, which was founded in 832 using a Confucian syllabus.
That's it from Japan. I hope you have enjoyed reading these blogs.
As always, thank you for your interest, and if you know anyone who might be interested in this blog then do send it on.
Das war's aus Japan. Ich hoffe, euch hat das Lesen dieser Blogs gefallen.
Wie immer vielen Dank für euer Interesse. Wenn ihr jemanden kennt, der an diesem Blog interessiert sein könnte, schickt ihn gerne weiter.
読んでくれてありがとう
See you....... matane!
Nigel 🖋️
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