This past Sunday, I had the dubious pleasure of whiling what promised to be a lovely spring day. ..away indoors waiting to shoot two arrows and scratch out one page of words.
It happens that I passed my test by hitting the second of my two shots, but the test itself made me realize that one key aspect of archery, for me, is that there is absolutely no room for faking, cheating, schmoozing, or similar unpleasant (yet potentially convenient) nonsense.　This thought arrived on the heels of two demonstrations by high ranked folks. These demonstrations didn’t go quite smoothly, and it was simultaneously humbling, reassuring, and disappointing to see teachers missing the target . On one hand, it proves kyudo is a lifetime of improvement sort of thing, because even though they missed more than half or their shots, they looked stable, focused, and intentional as they did. On the other hand, even if I do this forty more years, each arrow is still independent, and if those teachers weren’t hitting, then its doubtful I will either.
I’m chilling in a cafe in Ebisu called Rue Favart. It’s a pretentious overpriced place, but it’s at a street corner just so, and there’s something about it that I just like. Wood, dim lighting and a chill soundtrack can take you pretty far it seems.
It’s got the cafe glow down, what looked to be an impressive selection of cheese, a nice window view for single diners, and hot spiced lemonade. I haven’t even had said spiced lemonade because it would set me back 7 bucks but it sure sounds good.
Incidentally, there seems to be a french lesson taking place behind me. Though…since their drinks arrived they’ve only been talking in Japanese.
Oh yes. But rue favart has free internet. And I have an android phone. Methinks I shall be back.
It seems I checked out two exhibit-type things last month. Â One was the temporary Japan Media Arts Festival, the other was the Studio Ghibli museum.
The Ghibli museum had just what I like to see in museums – thoughtful, clever details in little places. Â (That’s exactly what I like about California Adventures, by the way). Â From the manhole covers, to little anthropomorphic dustballs poking out of corners, to little endless tunnels, or perfectly polished (dangerous) mirrors at dead end hallways, this cozy museum was quite entertaining. Â There was even a life sized Catbus (from totoro) that was full of kids. Â Of course, there were sketches and film gizmos galore, but I really enjoyed just seeing how they’d put the place together, and what clever things had been put where. Â
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The place was swarming with families and kids though – despite a cap on the number of visitors per day (tickets have to be reserved months in advance, via a very awkward convenience store automated kiosk. Â I think the difficulty of the reservation system is actually part of the threshold to filter people from being able to visit.)Â The museum has a strict policy of no photos while indoors, which was actually a little liberating. Â Since I couldn’t take any photos, it made my experience and the stuff I was looking at just a little more special, exclusive, and expirable. Â Ah yes – but this photo of a robot from Laputa (he’s friendly) was on the roof, which was outside, so everyone took pictures with him.
The Japan Media Arts event, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as delightful. Â It was free, and therefore packed with people. Â There were awards for the tenori-on, a funky electronic music maker, an anime short which won an Oscar two weeks later, manga, and “exhibitions” (translate: artsy, borderline inaccessible stuff). Â
One of the exhibits with a little more potential had people fishing in a pond, by using internet-enabled cellphones. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a really clear explanation anywhere (or it was buried in people). We were staring at an engaging, slightly ugly (but endearing in that new technology sort of way), screen with colorful, named fish floating by. She entered her name into the phone, but her fish never came by :( Turns out we should have been looking at the floor, which had a projection of the pond and fishing poles, so that we could CATCH a fish, which would then adopt her name. Oops. Well, it had promise.
