Return to Yuzawa, part 2: Whatever Floats Your Boat

~Yet another week of insane teaching slips by. Yesterday, I managed to get the staff of my school a free trip to Tokyo Disney in the near future (more on that in a later post). Today brings the second of a three-post series on The Return to Yuzawa, which sounds like the title of an overblown adventure novel. Anyway, the Yuzawa museum held a few more interesting surprises:

^ An old saddle. I can just imagine a heavily-armored samurai riding a horse with this saddle, swinging his katana and screaming "Banzai!!!" Or perhaps it just belonged to a farmer. A katana-wielding farmer.

--One of my favorite exhibits consisted of two very old maps of Echigo-Yuzawa:

^ I was able to favorably compare this old map of Yuzawa with a modern map I got from the tourism office. It sure looks like the area was a lot less crowded when this map was made. I like how the mountains "wrap around" the perimeter of the map in an interesting cartographic technique. Or maybe I'm wrong, and the mountains really did reverse direction like that. Perhaps "Things were different back then"?

^ This seems to show a large Japanese house of some kind surrounded by fields. Looks like a nice place to live. I wish I was able to read the display tag, but it's mostly in complex kanji that I have yet to see, much less read.

--After departing the museum, I saw an amazing sight over the nearby mountains:

^ The heavy cloud bank in the upper-center has filled in the gap in the mountain with mist. It looks almost as if a wave of white water is slowly rolling over the mountains and will soon inundate the entire town! I want to hike to the summit of that mountain and walk among the clouds. Hmm, perhaps that last line was a bit too poetic...

^ After leaving the museum, the next stop was a waterfall on the outskirts of town. The last time I was in here, this area was covered with snow, but now it's lush with green. On the way, I saw what was obviously a midget house (no disrespect intended to those of Restricted Growth).

^ Yuzawa is such a beautiful place. There were a lot of butterflies and other strange insects wandering around near the flowers. I saw an adult Japanese man with an insect net running around trying to catch butterflies. Hey, whatever floats your boat.

^ I took this picture while standing on the bridge in the previous picture. This area was carefully landscaped and quite pleasing to the eye. I want this stream in my backyard; the sound of falling water always helps me fall asleep.

^ A closer picture of the nearby flowers. This was the first trip that I brought along a tripod, and I was quite pleased with the clarity of the pictures thanks to the newfound stability of my camera.

^ A view of the same area as above, but from the back. This was taken on the concrete path that led deeper into the woods. It's interesting to imagine what this place looks like under eight feet of snow (hint: white).

^ Proceeding down the path, I reached a small dam that you can see in the background from three pictures ago. Notice how the damp stone on either side of the water creates a 'rainbow' look. At first, I thought this was painted to look this way (I wouldn't put it past the Japanese!), but a closer inspection revealed that the colored streaks are simply mold of some kind. Nevertheless, it is quite beautiful from a distance, another one of those unintended natural miracles that make the world a brighter place.

^ A picture cut/painted into the right side of the dam (you can see part of it on the right in the previous picture). The hiragana on the upper-right reads, "mizubashou", which is the name of a plant colloquially known as the "Banana plant" (Latin: Lysichiton camtschatcense). I assume they're native to the area, but I wasn't on the lookout for any at the time. Perhaps I'll spot some on my next trip to Yuzawa.

^ On the bridge again, but aimed at a higher angle. Deeper back, beyond the dam, stretches a mysterious valley that was my target destination. Don't you just feel a thrill of excitement at seeing this picture? If you don't, you need to get off of your rear and go do something outdoors!

Who knows what lies deeper in this valley? Perhaps: a hidden shrine? Strange fellow travelers? Bizarre creatures never before beheld by mortal eyes (if mortal=David)? A mighty cataract of dihydrogen monoxide? Yes, all that and more in the next post of...The Return to Yuzawa! ~Oyasumi.

Return to Yuzawa, part 1: Ski Suki

~On Monday, I took a trip to one of my favorite places in Japan: the mountain town of Echigo Yuzawa. During the winter ski season, it's a bustling hive of tourists and skiers, but during the summer it's largely empty, and a welcome relief from the sweltering humidity that characterizes summer in Japan. The day was perfect--moderate cloud cover to banish the glaring sun, a cool breeze blowing through the hills, and only a few tourists (such as myself) to get in the way.

As before, getting to Yuzawa was a snap thanks to Japan's superb system of public transportation. For around $11, I acquired a ticket from a machine (transaction time: 15 seconds), and climbed aboard the train (which left exactly on time). Seriously, I'm being spoiled by this. When I come back to America, I'm going to be appalled that I have to drive everywhere and buy overpriced gas, and submit myself to intense frustration at airports to catch cramped, overpriced planes--

Ahem. Anyway, Yuzawa was mostly quiet. The town is filled with gigantic hotels which are now mostly closed. I saw this one under construction:

^ doesn't that blue scaffolding make it look futuristic?

When I came to Yuzawa before, it was during the transition between the ski season and the summer tourist season, so there wasn't much to do. Now, more things are open and there's more to see. Hoping for a respite from the heat, I ducked into the Yuzawa Museum, a small but blissfully air-conditioned building. It contained exhibits and artifacts from Yuzawa's history stretching back hundreds of years.

^ Not being able to read most of the writing, I can only assume that this wickedly-bladed device is some kind of farming implement, perhaps a plow. It can also double as a weapon for fending off hungry bears and equally-hungry samurai.

^ There was also this loom, an interesting example of weaving machinery. It was quite small, though, so I felt as if I was looming over it.

^ This purpose of this machine took me some time to deduce. I think it's a rope-making machine: feed two strands of straw in each of the feeders on the right, turn the crank, and it somehow combines them into the rope you can see spooled up on the left. Brilliant!

^ I was amazed at what the bygone people of Yuzawa were able to do with straw. They made shoes, coats, roofs and ropes. Here, we have an unusual pair of mittens. Speculation: these are for a) a person who lost eight fingers, b) a mutant with gigantic, two-fingered hands, or c) intended for an animal of some kind. Does anyone have any additional ideas, however far-out they may be?

^ "Polly put the kettle on, we'll all have tea." Mom, this one's for you!

^ A mock-up of a Japanese lady looking out at a past version of Yuzawa. The instrument at the bottom of the picture is a "shamisen", which is a bit like a banjo. You can read all about it in the book "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden, a book that was reasonably enjoyable but which I don't care to read again.

^ Wooden sandals. What makes these interesting is the symbol on them, 〒, which is the symbol of the Japan Post, the national postal system over here. I imagine the post office assigned these sandals to mail carriers a century or so ago. They look quite beat-up, so I'm guessing there's a lot of miles on them. Oops, make that kilometers.

^ A horde of old coins, corroded with age. The cylinders in the back are more rolls of coins. These particular coins resemble modern five- and fifty-yen coins, which have holes in them (I'm not quite sure why this is). I wonder what the adjusted value of this cache is? Here's an image of where the coins came from:

^ Hmm, looks like they dug up someone's not-so-safe deposit box! Let the above photographs be a lesson to all the people saving their money in their mattress or wherever. Remember, "A penny saved is a penny earned" is crap! Inflation means your money will be worth far less in the long term unless you actually invest it in something.

On a side note, the unit of Japanese currency is only referred to as the "yen", outside of Japan. Around here, it's called the en (kanji: 円). All money is measured in en; there's no demarcation between dollars and cents or pounds and pence or whatever they're using now in the European Union.

^ A set of wooden skis and poles from pre-war times. Seeing these makes me want to ski right now! As I say in Japan, "Ski suki!" (sounds like: ski ski!), which means "I like to ski!". Of course, I'd rather strap something a bit less breakage-prone to my feet. No sense impaling yourself on splintered wood if you can avoid it.

^ Here we have a set of skis intended for a giant. Japanese giants are reclusive and live deep in the mountains, venturing out only to squash impudent humans and occasionally trade for custom-built equipment large enough for their massive frames. Okay, okay, so these are actually the runners to a wooden sleigh, such as this one:

^ Together now: "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells / Jingle All The Waaaaaay!"

--That's it for tonight. Check back in a day or two for more pictures and occasionally-sarcastic commentary from yours truly. ~Oyasumi!

Public Service Announcement #2: Time to Take Out the Trash!

~Trash is something that Americans devote little thought to. Actually, I imagine that most people deliberately spend as little mental energy on it as possible. Who wants to be concerned with trash, other than sanitation engineers and wives who complain to their husbands to take out the garbage? We just take the bag out once a week, throw it into the can, and it disappears the next day. Wow, magic! Makes me wonder what those stuck-up Cary subdivisions with pseudo-British names would look like after a few weeks without trash collection service. Oh what a thin veneer civilization is...

Like so many other things, it's different here in Japan. The proper disposal of garbage (or gomi in Japanese) is very complicated and bewildering to foreigners such as myself. Garbage must be separated based on what kind of garbage it is, and each type is taken away on a different day. For example, one category is "burnable trash", and another is "cans and bottles". Here are just a few rules from the arcane system they use here in Nagaoka:

1. Burnable Trash is collected on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
2. Non-Burnable Trash is collected on Tuesday
3. Cans and Bottles are collected on Thursday
4. Plastic is collected every weekday
5. ...and my personal favorite: newspapers, cardboard, and magazines are collected on the the third Thursday of each month.
   

That's just a sample of the rules, and they get even more bizarre. Burnable and Non-Burnable trash must be placed in special colored bags, which have to be purchased at supermarkets and convenience stores. I thought this was ridiculous until I learned that the bag sales help finance the collection of trash.

^ The side of a yellow bag for Burnable trash. As you can see, the bag is marked with the things that you can place in the bag: food scraps, certain clothes, paper food containers, photographs, small paper waste, certain toys, etc. These bags are sold in different sizes; I buy smaller bags, and a set of ten sets me back a little over a dollar. When you think about it, that's less that 10 cents to get rid of a bag of trash, so I can hardly complain.

Burnable trash is sorted and burned at incinerators in each city. In Nagaoka, the heat generated by the incinerator is used to warm swimming pools and hot baths in the nearby "Ecotopia Kotobuki", a public facility. Brilliant!

^ Blue bags are for non-burnable trash, which includes broken glass, small household appliances, small electronics, pieces of metal, etc. This is the only trash that is actually dumped in landfills. The blue bags are twice as expensive as the yellow ones, because the trash is more difficult to dispose of. In the almost five months that I've been in Nagaoka, I've used only two small blue bags. Larger trash such as futons and television sets must be specially disposed of; you have to call the sanitation office and schedule a removal. You also have to pay a disposal fee. For televisions, it's ~$30.

Anyway, cans and bottles must be placed together in any clear plastic bag. Larger paper, magazines, newspapers, and cardboard must be bundled together and tied with cord. Unfortunately, I couldn't find and cord, so I cheated and used rubber bands (they still collected it). Still, that kind of trash is piling up because it's only collected once a month, and I usually forget. Remember, I'm an American who's been culturally conditioned not to think about these things.

One odd thing I've noticed in Japan is a conspicuous lack of trash cans. On every sidewalk in America, there's a trash can every ten feet or so. In malls, they're all over the place. In Japan, however, there are none. Seriously, there's no public trash cans. If you have any garbage, you simply have to take it home with you. The exception is the recycling containers found near most vending machines, a refreshing change from when I was in college and couldn't find recycling containers anywhere.

Actually, I did find a trash can once, or rather, it was shown to me. The teacher that I replaced took me to the can and reverently imparted the knowledge of its existence, making me swear only to use its power for good (okay, so I made that part up). Sadly, it was removed only a few weeks after I arrived in Nagaoka. I think they're on to me...

If you think the above rules on trash disposal are extreme, wait until you read this. For me, the most annoying trash to get rid off is drink cartons, the kind that hold juice or milk and are made of plastic-coated cardboard:

^ It's actually illegal to throw these in the trash(!). How, you ask, does one get rid of them? Here's what you do: 1) wash the carton thoroughly, 2) cut it open and spread it flat, 3) let it dry, 4) take it to any supermarket and place it in a specially-marked bin.

Why the bizarre rules? The reason is twofold. First is that Japan consists of small, mountainous, heavily populated islands. There simply isn't much room for gigantic mounds of trash like we have in America. Besides, tourism, both foreign and domestic, is an important part of the economy, and the Japanese don't want to spoil the few natural areas with garbage.

The second reason is more opinion than fact. The Japanese culture is one of extreme social responsibility and fear of embarrassment/ridicule. No one wants to look bad, so everyone makes an effort to properly dispose of trash. If you drive down any highway in America, it's littered with junk and cigarette butts. In Japan, they're spotless, both because of more frequent cleanups and the simple fact that people don't throw nearly as much stuff out of windows. It's rather nice, actually.

Yes, the trash system is crazy, but in the end I think it's a good thing. Because taking out trash is so much of a hassle, people produce far less of it than in America. Much of the trash is recycled or used for beneficial purposes such as heating pools. The slogan of 'reduce, reuse, and recycle' that most people ignore in American is deeply embedded into the culture here, and it really makes a difference.

So the next time you throw that bag of gomi into the garbage can, think of ways that you could cut down on what you throw out, or more things that you could recycle (I'm looking at you, college students!). If you don't recycle, get a recycling box and use it. I'm not saying we need crazy rules like they have in Japan, but we definitely need to change the way we get rid of garbage in America or the country will be covered in it.

Oh, by the way--the rules are all changing in a few months. The city is adding green bags to the current system (I have no clue what they're for) and changing some of the disposal days! CURSES!!!
~Oyasumi.