31 August 2007 Siblings
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Archive for August, 2007
30 August 2007 Family Goodness
I’ve long since realized that having kids is the best way of having fun. In fact, just holding my babies, sometimes I think to myself, “Is this legal?” because some part of me still thinks that anything so much fun must be illegal.
If holding one baby is great, holding two (of your own) is exponentially greater. If we ever have a third I must not hold them all at once because my head my explode.
Anyway, here is my brood watching the World Track and Field Championships in Osaka on TV. Genbo loves watching the people run and jump, and is amazingly good at predicting the winners. Of course, this is only because he loves the color yellow, and the Jamaicans with their yellow shirts rule the 200-400 sprints we were watching. (As always, click to embiggen.)
Taking some time out to kiss Zoe. We’ve finally convinced him to kiss her on the cheek, not full mouth-to-mouth (where did he get that?)
Mom can’t resist either. These babies have probably already been kissed more than their entire lineage on the Japanese side going back thousands of years.
Of course, I cannot truly claim to love my family without acquiring one of these to capture domestic bliss with at the rate of 11 frames per second.
28 August 2007 A Weekend of Shakuhachi
I spent the weekend with my shakuhachi teacher, Taniguchi-sensei. It was nice to go up there, as I haven’t been up in about six months. I usually try to go every few months, but the birth of Zoe made it hard to make time. When most people learn an instrument they take weekly lessons, but I go up for 1-2 full days every few months. During this time we spend 6-8 hours each day playing, which I think is actually better than practicing together just for a little while every week. He puts me up at his inn, feeds me, brings me to hotsprings during the evenings, and spends the entire day or weekend teaching me, all for free. For this reason he has very few students. Probably less than five at any given time. So, I’m very honored to be one of them, especially because I think he’s the best player alive (and I’ve heard a lot).
I was particularly pleased this time because a piece I have been working on for the past seven years finally earned a star of approval from him. Of course, it’s the hardest piece in the repertoire and I began learning it when I could hardly play at all, but it’s always been my favorite song and the theory is if you can play that you can play anything. The piece, called San-An, or “safe birth,” is a centuries old piece played by itinerant zen monks for alms as a prayer for safe birth. When I first started playing it he said my version was more like “incredibly difficult labor,” but I’ve now clawed and scrambled my way up to a reasonably safe birth after all these years, and I’m very happy about it. To stretch the analogy entirely too far, if I am now at a 2-hour or so labor ending in a happy healthy baby (which, coincidentally, was how Zoe popped out), Taniguchi’s version is so good he’s about a 30 second labor resulting in Superbaby. Still, he said I’m now good enough to play in front of people without being embarrassed, and I can spend the rest of my life polishing, which is just what I intend to do.
UPDATE: Although I assume most people who visit this blog know what a shakuhachi is, I’ve now updated the entry with a link to Wikipedia. Also, here is an old recording of my teacher playing an old folk song at a recital at Oberlin when he was a guest professor there.
Taniguchi-sensei, his wife Machiko, and a 150-year old (estimated) happy and healthy woman who works at the inn.
The entrance hall, stuffed with various Buddhas and Boddhisatvas. I really want that big life-sized fat guy on the right.
The view right outside the inn, which is in the boonies. The sign reads “Don’t throw cans in the rice field.”
23 August 2007 Back Monday
Going up today to spend the weekend at my shakuhachi teacher’s place, so no posts until Monday.
He lives in a beautiful area of the country, though, so I’ll take my camera and hopefully be able to sneak out and take some pics.
23 August 2007 Deep blue morning skies
This was the color of the sky this morning, a remarkable shade of…deep periwinkle? Do I sound like a J.Crew catalog? It came after a night of much lightning, which was a nice show for a treat as I was up late finishing a long project. It was nice to wake up to such a clear, strangely colored sky to match the clear feeling I had of having no work to do today for the first time in a long time.
The lake was very beautiful, too. Don’t tell my wife, but I want to buy a kayak to bring down to the lake on days like today, to combine much-needed exercise with aesthetic enjoyment and some almost-as-much-needed solitude.
(As always, click to embiggen.)
22 August 2007 Time is the fire in which we burn
It’s practically axiomatic that kids make you feel time flowing by quicker, but I still can’t believe looking at these that they are only four months old. Genbo’s already a different person by now.
21 August 2007 Setsubun
No, this is not a rave. This is a yearly festival at the Fujinomori shrine, a thousand-year old shrine near where were used to live. This particular festival is Setsubun, a which serves to mark the seasons and inculcate fear of the other into young Japanese minds at the same time. A real two-fer. Part of the ritual is to have these scary demons show up, at which point the kids are given little beans and encouraged to pelt the demons with the beans, shouting “Demons go outside! Health and happiness come inside!” I actually like this for its complete lack of any PC sentiment. You just don’t get 2 and 3 year olds expressing ritualized hatred towards the other in US culture, and I think we’re poorer for it.
Anyway, Fujinomori shrine puts on a big show each setsubun, with a whole staged morality play with bad demons and good angels and everything. It was pretty psychedelic.
20 August 2007 Plotting to take over the world
From when he was only a few months old Maki and I said of Genbo that he would end up in a life of white collar crime. I know that’s a hell of a thing to say about your three month old son, but there’s always been something naughty and mischievous in his eye. Here are a couple photos from when he was about 10 months old to back up this claim. He still gets these expressions.
This one looks disturbingly like a baby Karl Rove.
Notice the drool hanging off the chin. At least he no longer does that.
17 August 2007 A wry smile
Little Zoe isn’t even three months old yet, but she’s already got herself a very distinctive smile. One half of her mouth opens up real wide, but the other side manages not to move very much, making it look like she’s giving you an ironic grin. Right now she’s at the point where her neck is strong enough to move it around, but not strong enough to support itself, which is actually a very dangerous combination. She’ll swing her neck around, but if you aren’t there to catch it for her…ouch!
15 August 2007 Birthday Cruise
So the picture a few days ago was from a cruise that we took along the lake on Genbo’s birthday. The Michigan is a huge paddleboat staffed mostly by Americans, from Michigan I presume, as there is some sort of sister state or city relationship that I can never be bothered to remember. It was nice until Japanese culture intruded and then it was excruciating.
First Genbo got a treat on the way there, for we were lucky enough to capture one of the rare Thomas cars, which he loves and goes bat*&^% over.
Here is a photo of the boat itself.
People greeting us playing As the Saints Come Marching In. This was pretty nice. Little did I know it presaged something much worse.
View of our condo from out on the lake.
Genbo was mesmerized by the paddle.
Zoe had fun, too, at least as much as her tiny brain is capable of.
Unfortunately, after about the first half hour or so of the 90 minute journey they began a Disney-esque stage show with much hyper-active screaming and cavorting about, very typical of Japanese culture which dictates that everything must be 100% joyful-happy-lucky all the time and preferably in the loudest, most invasive and annoying manner possible. They thoughtfully piped the inane show through the entire boat so there was nowhere to escape.
Here they are trying to make Genbo accept something for his birthday, and he is showing the good sense of trying to avoid the entire spectacle.
14 August 2007 Street Portraits
One aspect of photography I’ve been getting more and more into is something I call “street portraits.” I love capturing faces that make you feel — and it can only be illusion — that you know or can intuit something about the person’s mental state. Also, in the same way that nature is inherently more beautiful than anything mankind could ever create, so a person’s face, like a rock molded by the weather, is more interesting than anything fashioned by people.
When I started off with this kind of photography I was using my 70-200 lens, but that thing’s a monster that you just don’t plop into your bag and carry around with you all day. So, I traded my prized 85/1.4 for a 135/f2, but in the end this didn’t have enough reach, and today I traded that in for a 300mm lens. It’s old and used, but I can tell it’s going to be one of my favorites. It definitely has the reach to go in and pull something out of my unsuspecting subjects. Here are a couple from today, my first day with the 300/f4.
Here are a couple of the last photos I took with the 135/f2. May she be happy in her new home.
13 August 2007 Summer Days
It’s the middle of summer here, and one of the best things about our new condo is the fountain in the private park. There are tons of kids in the same condo, and they all love to congregate in this fountain on hot days. Unfortunately it wasn’t designed with a device to circulate the water, and if you leave the fountain itself on for a long time it uses up incredible amounts of water. So, an industrious fellow jerry-rigged a hose substitute that uses much less water, and the kids don’t care.
Maki, Genbo, and Zoe are gone back to the relatives today for a week or so, so I’ll put up a few cute pictures of Genbo. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get around to some non-family oriented posts.
(As usual, click photos for larger versions.)
