Anders Zorn

Winter attire!  A great acquisition here in Japan, very warm, soft, sexy.  We are having some warmer weather these days, which is nice.  It is a damn shame I am at work from 8 to 4 Monday through Friday!  I hope it persists through the weekend .. I want to loaf around town and candidly drink in public, or write, read, paint, lean and loaf at my ease.  These days it gets dark around 5:30, so I am usually in my apartment from 4:30 to the time I go to bed.  I think I need to start taking evening walks to ward off neurosis.  Then again, small doses of neurosis are quite acceptable!

 

I picked up this bottle because it was so damn cute.  I guess that is good design - compelled me to buy it based solely on the label.  I actually despise sweet wine, so it was a bit tough to get it down even.  I think it was worse than drinking a coke!  Anyhow, it was my companion through several extended jams on keyboard.  Now it is thankfully empty and a nice decoration when you walk into my apartment.

My vacation plans for this winter have been a bit all over the place.  I have finally decided on two things: 

One, I will be visiting my friend Sachi in Osaka, then traveling to Wakayama and potentially Kyoto.  We met in France 5 years ago, which is really wild to reconnect after so long a time!  Fortunately we have kept in touch since then.  Her family lives in Wakayama, which is also a small village.  I look forward to seeing how it differs from Usuki.  Usuki is on Kyushu island, while Osaka and Wakayama (and most of Japan) is on Honshu.  Kyushu is known as the more rural, forested area.  Osaka is famous for its cherry blossoms, good shopping (yay!) and takoyaki.  Takoyaki, how I love thee! Tako is octopus, and yaki is grilled.  However, it is not just grilled octopus!  It is like a hushpuppy batter with chunks of tentacle in it, along with spices, herbs, onions.  Lots of variations here.

Why am I posting this 20 minutes before my lunch break?  

Other plan .. the real deal .. I am in theory getting a traditional style full sleeve in a village near here.  Tattoos in Japan have been associated with crime (like every other society on the planet..?), so there is a real taboo for them here.  Shops are few and far between.  The traditional Japanese full body suits were/are(?) reserved only for the yakuza, Japanese mafia.  It is overwhelmingly ironic!  Yakuza are open about their affiliations, they register their businesses within their cities and have registered addresses and offices where they work in gambling, prostitution, drug and gun trafficking, as well as money laundering.  To further the irony, they no longer get tattoos, because it would associate them with a yakuza image.  So, the tattoo association with crime is a bit far fetched, and ridiculous in that crime is publicly known and not identified by tattoos.  I digress.  Lucky, I found through a friend of a friend a local artist, works entirely from freehand.  I will be getting a crane (the bird, not the heavy machinery, though both are appreciated) standing in a river, either in repose, or maybe gobbling up some frogs.

I appreciate the idea of the crane in Taoist thought.  It stands on one very thin leg in perfect stillness and repose.  The idea is that it is seemingly frail but is solid, delicate, firm, balanced.  The Taoists thought that it stood in harmony and meditation for hours on end.  I appreciate these virtues! Really beautiful.  I actually see them all the time in Usuki.