Remember to Vote
November 1st, 2008
From A.Susan:
We didn't wait 232 years for this
Categories: My Life
bbPress Spoiler Tags
October 30th, 2008
I’ve been fiddling with bbPress as a forum tool and I now has my first plugin!
Spoiler Bar makes the text and background of your spoiler tagged text the same, so people have to highlight it to see it.
Yeah, it’s totally basic stuff that every forum has. And now bbPress has it too!
Categories: Smart Things
We Choose To Go To The Moon
October 26th, 2008
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
(more…)
Categories: Smart Things
My mom has diarrhea
October 13th, 2008
Not MY mom! But the neighbor kid shouted that out so loud I’m amazed people didn’t poke their heads out the windows. Poor neighbor mom. Apparently Neighbor Dad had to take her to the ER.
Categories: Overheard
Have a Happy New Year!
October 12th, 2008
Dessler - Jewish take on Dexter’s morning routine from Dan S on Vimeo.
Categories: Entertainment
Multiple Things of No Consequence
October 6th, 2008
The stock market sucks, Misty May is out of DWTS, 6 in 8 Americans sees a Depression as ‘Likely, EBay cuts 1000 jobs, Miley Cyrus is 16 (and still not legal), Hamsters (and other household pets, like turtles, mice and monkeys) can pose a health risk to your children, and finally … The Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media has opened.
Also, Bob Barr was on NPR over the weekend, making a pretty damn good play for my vote. I’m more Green than Libertarian, but frankly, he’s got a good clue, and the Green party isn’t much with getting their act together.
Categories: My Life
CLEAR!
September 29th, 2008
Or why I won’t be going on vacation anywhere anytime soon.
This is an EKG:
This is the my company’s stock over the last five days:
Now, I know, it actually looks pretty good when you compare it to similar companies, but really it’s not a fun time adventure. I need to start making money for my online crap.
Categories: My Life
The Longest Day
September 29th, 2008
The last day was long and short. It was my least favorite kind of Henro-ing, being the kind on roads (in this case, I think we were walking along a highway) and we got lost a couple times. On the other hand, we only walked about 6km and the rest of the time we took the rail or the bus.
Eight days of walking. Eight days of being a stranger. Eight days of eating what food was presented to me. Eight days of not speaking the language. Eight days of sleeping on futons on tatami. Eight days of bathrooms that were really bath rooms. Eight days were one of my daily quests was finding the Western toilet.
Eight days were now at an end.
Everyone was drained. At one point or another, we were too hoot, too tired, too sore, and so on. And yet not a single one of us were sorry we did this. Most people were nice to us. A few were indifferent, but none had been rude to me. I was tired, sunburnt, bug bitten and sore. Every time I moved a different muscle protested anew, and my collar bone was rubbed raw from my pack’s chest strap.
And yet.
I think I understand why people do this more than once. It’s something quite extra-ordinary in 2008 to be able to make this kind of a journey. To quest without an obvious end goal readily in sight. To wander through a rural island on a nation considered to be little more than the glittering pinacle of the modern world. And it is, but it’s also the old, traditional ways, with gardens in backyards for food by every house and a bonsai in the yard. It is a different world, a culture that remains unfamiliar but now makes a little more sense.
To state the obvious, the Japanese are people. They can be funny, erudite, mean, nice and crude. They wear a veneer of helpful politeness as they want us to enjoy our stay in a way they think we’re familiar with, but they’re delighted when we eat new foods without fear. They avoid us at times, but accept our personal prostrations of apology when we make a mistake. Maybe this was because I walked O-Henro and I tried hard not to be that ignorant gaijin who only eats familiar food. Maybe it was just because I’m me, and a strange halo surrounds my adventures.
Things were different there, but the same, thank you Bill and Ted. I felt more human and humane than I had been for months. I was inspired to wanderlust, but I knew how content I’d been to get home with my friends, family and cats and enjoy a damn pizza. I missed TV and Radio in my native tongue, but I knew I’d miss things like a commercial where hot women in bikinis turned into dudes with goatees, still in the bikini.
You can’t make these things up.
From temple 22, we walked to the train and then up 500 meters of (mostly) stairs, to 23, back down them to the train, and the train to home. Some of us went, by train or foot, to temple 24, 70km away, but we went home. The rail to Tokushima and then a two hour bus to Kobe. Somewhere along the way I gave up on shoes and went to flipflops.
I was sad, as we reached Tokushima. I already missed the quiet, and the city felt unreal, fake, as if it was the Disneyland version of the world; a place that was only what I made it out to be. Yet there was no Disney joy or childlike exuberance. I was merely the 16th century man in the 21st century world.
I wrote ‘A Gaijin’s Journey’ once. That’s not what this became. I didn’t tour as a gaijin, or explore as a tourist. I slept on tatami, mastered a Japanese toilet, ate the local foods and enjoyed the local beauty. I’ve been to a natural spa and climbed 750 meters above sea level. I found that just because my journey wasn’t for my religion, it wasn’t made any less spiritual and moving.
There is no conclusion, no earth shattering retrospective to say ‘Aha! This is who I am!’ I’ve always been pretty aware of my self. I just hope I’m lucky enough to go back again.
Categories: Henro 2008
The Great Schlep
September 26th, 2008
There’s one last Japan post to happen, but before that…
The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.
Categories: News
Mother, may I take five giant steps?
September 15th, 2008
Free again from the strictures and bindings of towns, we returned to the mountains for Temple 20. Kakurinji Temple of the Crane Forest was a far less arduous hike than the tripe up Temple 12, but it was no less tiring. We started on the road, would up around the base of the mountain, and then, finally, reached the dirt trail. Even at seven in the morning, the day was hot and muggy. Wisely, we stopped for fresh, cool water every time it was made available.
Along the road, we avoided someone spraying pesticides in a space-suit (really, it looked like the Intel Bunny Guy - I used to have one, but someone stole it off my desk), accepted Ossetai of tomatoes and cucumbers (and salt! She gave us a salt shaker!), and we found 
a Grateful Dead sticker on a car. This last novelty prompted me to start singing all the Dead songs I could remember, as well as any camp songs.
The trip was hard, don’t get me wrong, but once we got on the mountain and off the road, I was doing much better. It was steeper with fewer switchbacks than anything we’d yet done. At one point, we walked up some small stairs rather than follow the trail because it was easier. Mountain King Boone met his match, and by the time we got to the temple, everyone was beat. We ate some ’salad a fresco’, the last granola bars, and chugged our water.
We had arrived at the temple just as it opened, and a priest ran out to show up the fresh water (which was from a hose, so naturally there was a little spraying of personage involved). The place was cool, safe and very wonderful. We listened to the early morning serenade of nature and in general we were pleased with ourselves. A couple little old ladies had driven up, and gave us the stink eye that we’d beaten them (or that we were gaijin, it was unclear). Dad helped everyone tape up knees and feet while we relaxed. It was only 10:30AM, but already it was in the mid 80s (F), and we had another mountain to climb.
That was the plan, at least. We were intending to hike back down 20, follow the road around the mountain to 21, and the up 21. Boone and I speculated on how this wouldn’t happen. As we made the short (2.6km) trek down, the steepness was brutal. My knee was holding up okay, though, because it wasn’t as twisty turny. That and it was taped up. Boone’s feet started to swell up, sadly, and nothing was helping them. The really hard part was when we got to the Giant Steps. They were so wide you always ended up stepping down on the same foot. It was like playing Mother May I.
Even taped up, we all petered out at the bottom. Too hot, too tired, too sore, and it wasn’t even noon! One member of our party couldn’t tie his shoes. He had to wrap the laces around the whole of his shoe instead! Thankfully, while Shikoku is remote and lacks WiFi, it has a great bus system, taxis and phones. One 11km car ride later, we were at the Minshuku for the night. The rooms were, surprisingly, ready, so we stashed our gear and took a Gondola up the back side of 21. Had we walked, it would have only been 6 or so km, but the Gondola only comes up the back of 21.
Temple 21 is, by far, the richest of all the temples. It was so huge and sprawling, Boone and I got lost trying to find everything. After wandering and exploring, we found everything and everyone, including the party members who opted to walk. We took the Gondola back down just as the rain started. It was a nice drizzle and quickly turned into a downpour when we hit the hotel. The valley, as Dad explained, was in a micro climate, and thus was totally different than the rest of Japan.
I was, yet again, the only woman at the hotel. They were expecting a group of women who were Henroing by bus later that evening, so I was asked to wait for my bath. I was fine with that, and figured out how to pick up Sumo on the TV. We watched with the sound off while Dad and Boone and the boys got their bath in. I had to wait over an hour, but finally around 5pm, I got my turn. After all that fuss about making sure the Gaijin Girl didn’t have to bathe with the boys, what do you think happened? A dude walked in. I was shaving my legs, like you do, and washing my hair when in walked the guy. He went to the far corner of the the bathroom, I stayed in mine, and we didn’t look at each other. I really could have done without it, truth be told, but I was in Japan, and that’s just how it goes.
Sumo was still on when I got back, and I told the boys what had happened. Dad was pleased that I hadn’t lost my hippie bohemian ways living in Chicago. Generic nudity is something I can easily separate from sexual nudity. Boone was a little surprised and I think worried. He’s 17, it’s hard to tell concern on a teenager’s face sometimes. The joke turned out to be on the dude, of course. Five women went in after me, his tour group, and proceeded to give him shit. He was apparently supposed to wait until they had finished. At dinner, he was pretty much mortified about the whole thing.
Categories: Henro 2008
