summer features

horrors, fireworks and festivals are the traditional things to beat the relentless summer heat. wherever you go, a summer festival, usually with japanese folk dance and often with fireworks display, takes place all over japan in late july. even in my small community, little children, their parents and grand-parents gathered for a neighbourhood’s summer festival organised by our residential association last night. as the majority on the block is retirees, it naturally didn’t sound as much soulful as a summer festival should be. the volume level of the dance music, however, was set maximum. at any rate, i could hear people having fun outside. i wasn’t up to it. i was cooking lemon and basil (home-grown, of course!) pasta, a perfect dish for a summer evening, sipping cinzano orancio at home.
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in my personal kyoto’s summer festivals ranking, motomiya-sai (festival) at fushimi inari grand shrine has come top so far. i’m not really good at revelling in activities like summer festivals that have to have a characteristically upbeat mood…i hope you won’t call me a killjoy. so instead, i visited the pre-festival night of motomiya-sai two years ago, in which candles are lit for garden lanterns throughout and some 7000 paper lanterns are displayed every summer. i loved the calm but inspirational atmosphere. actually, i’ve just learned that it was held last weekend. i though it was taking place this weekend. there was no news coverage of the festival.

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fushimi inari grand shine is renowned for featuring various statues of foxes and thousands of torii (a reddish orange lacquered gate). the fox is considered the messenger of the shinto deity of granaries. so this particular shrine is guarded by a pair of the sacred foxes (i don’t know their sex, both male perhaps? or asexual). a walk through some 4km upwards tunnel of torii that leads into the heart of inari-yama (a mountain, but rather, it’s a lush and steep hill) must be quite something, which certainly inspired christo’s gate project. although i had to give up half way there due to the darkness and attacks of mosquito when i followed the orange tunnelled path, the experience convinced me that the site was sacred. we japanese believe that holy spirit resides in a forest or a mountain. you’d feel it in the air: inari-yama at sunset was indeed spiritual.

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why are foxes thought to be sly, by the way? my mother told me she would get thrilled when her grand-mother who raised her told her a bedtime story of a cunning fox. all those fables are long gone. we’ve all become less superstitious than ever, while a virtual world is dominating more and more. still, the traditional notion of fox as a symbol of deceivers, or sexy women sounds fascinating to me. there seems to be more than a few variants of the folktale that a man was bewitched by a vixen that disguised herself as a young beautiful woman in japan. and, the cunning little vixen by leoš janáček is one of my favourite operas i’ve seen at the royal opera house in london. it is based on a comic-strip about a vixen and a man. i went to see that light-hearted opera in march, but somehow the season has been wrongly input in my memory. i always would think i saw it in summer. maybe because my visual memories of that fairytale opera mixed it up with shakespeare’s midnight summer’s dream that i saw at the barbican in summer, i suppose.

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while it’s hardly surprising even if you encounter urban foxes in london since i’ve seen them in west hampstead, we can see no foxes in modern japanese cities as folktales of vixen are fading into oblivion. alternatively, we’ve had enough of over-populated starlings, pigeons and crows everywhere. you wouldn’t believe it. ‘the birds’, hitchcock’s masterpiece, has almost become a true horror. which case is more fun, or scarier?

my green project

the rainy season is actually and officially over. school’s out. kids are excited under the flawless sky. as for me, i already feel tired since i was tossing and turning all night. it was a bright moonlit night with no breezes. besides, my local cicada choir kindly woke me up at 6 this morning. what can I do amid the summer heat?
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before the heat got unbearable, i bought bigger terracotta pots (i really dislike plastic ones) for my overgrown babies to re-pot. so i did that last week. and i did something more: i gave my chair and shoe cabinet a makeover. it was my long-neglected green project and i’m now happy that i’ve accomplished it at long last. the result seems a bit different from what i expected, though. the colour was supposed to be mint, bluish green, not pistachio. japanese house paint manufactures offer a little variety in colours unfortunately. i am hoping that they don’t look like a product of the bbc’s changing room. never mind. it'll improve, hopefully get darker, with age.
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in the mid 90’s, my ‘london goldsmiths-yba era’, i was sharing sort of a riverside flat in rotherhithe with bridget. my bedroom floor was hardwood and painted white. it was shabby in a way, but i miss that feel so much. the saddest thing about our modern japanese homes is, we have no longer a spirit of zen, almost everything is made of synthetic materials like faux-brick walls and faux-wood or faux-tiled floorings. they can be tasteful, but they lack a little character, frankly, their textures are hideous. my pad is no exception. it was refurbished but looked bland when i first took a look at this flat. but yet, no matter how old the building was, the location was impeccable: it was walking distance from my mother’s and adjacent to a lush green huge park. so the deal was closed at once.
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my faux-wood floor and polyester wallpaper can’t really make my living comfortable. they are absolutely eye-spam to me. still, when it comes to money, i certainly know where to compromise my liking. i needed to get some furniture and air conditioners on a budget when i moved in. i even asked its former owner to leave me the ugly faux-mahogany shoe cabinet in the entrance hall (we japanese take off shoes there, you know). i was going to paint it, anyway.

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i’ve never lived in the same home any longer than 6 years in my whole life, even in my childhood. until recently my life was nomadic. during and after the separation and dissolution of my marriage i moved from place to place, i inevitably had to give up plenty of stuff and some, including my chinaware that has been handed down in my mother’s family from generation to generation, simply went missing. on the other hand, i’ve somehow kept a bentwood chair with a cane seat, which was passed over from my ex-husband’s parents. it was among my furniture i left at my parents’ home for a long time. i’m now using it as my night table.
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my ex-mother-in-law once told me how she got the chair and i'm fond of the way. that was kind of her impulse buy, or rather love at first sight like this: she saw the chair as she drove by a furniture shop in tokyo; she stopped the car; she walked into the shop; she bought it and took it home. although we still get along very well, i feel a bit bad that i have her chair. i've just missed a chance to ask her if she wants it back probably because i like its classic but modern design. the same school of michael thonet’s once-ubiquitous café chair (i dare not call it an imitation)? the colour was originally turquoise. my ex-husband and i repainted it white to blend with our surroundings when we held it in our possession. and now pistachio.
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i love to keep the chair and the shoe cabinet here, no matter dowdy the colour may look. my home could be occupied with too much stuff from muji and ikea, otherwise.

zen garden + minimalist artwork

i’ve put down my roots in osaka for 3 years now, but i still don’t feel like i belong here. no matter where i had lived, or i might live in the future, my roots are always in kyoto. in fact, kyoto’s central area is closer than osaka’s from my town geographically. although i lived there for disappointingly a short period in my childhood, the terraced-house where i was born (technically speaking, i was born in a nearby maternity clinic) still stands on the corner of sanjo-dori and jingu-michi. it looks in bad shape as it’s been empty for decades, though. the whole housing premise belongs to my great-grand mother’s family who used to run a pottery business of awata-yaki, one of a great variety of kyo-yaki.
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the house is just a stone’s throw from kyoto’s major attractions such as yasaka shrine, chion-in temple, the national art museum, heian jingu (shrine), higashiyama zoo and gion, the famous geisha district. kyoto is so ridiculously wonderful through four seasons; kyoto is very special. because, this ancient city proudly hangs onto our japanesque aesthetics, which i didn’t notice when i was living in kyoto as a child who never had interest in shrines and temples or i could never consider fun, nor was i a festival goer even when i was a child somehow, while kyoto holds many theatrical festivals especially in summer. for example, the extravagant gion matsturi (festival), in which a series of shinto rituals spans the entire month of july. yamahoko jungyo (floats parade), the peak of the festival, falls on a thursday, this year. i’ve never seen it, however, i’d rather avoid thousands of revellers filling gion than joining in. i am less keen on kyoto’s flamboyant side than its understated beauty.

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if i visited kyoto this week i would escape from the crowd to my favourite zen temple complexes of daitokuji or tofukiji, instead. they offer anyone who loves tranquillity an urban retreat. daitokuji is the original place where the art of tea was formed and performed by sen no rikyu so that you can imagine how the secluded location and sacred environment were played as elements to its birth. i can tell that there are fewer people who fancy visiting either of them in summer, when kyoto becomes like a hot pan on a hob, than other seasons. usually, zen temple complex consists of several sub-temples that boast their respective 枯山水(karesansui): dry rock and stone gardens. and two of my favourite zen gardens were built by late mirei shigemori, the artist-turned-garden-architect, for daitokuji and tofukuji. the gardens, of which designs are pretty unsusual, were his abstract expression of modern art, as it were.

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in the meantime, whenever i visit a white cube to view some contemporary artwork, i’d feel as if i view a zen garden. between 枯山水 and minimalist work, in a broad sense, such as richard sera’s, anish kapooa’s and rothko’s in particular, i’ve found something in common. the magical ingredients of esotericism in both cases are beauty, simplicity, frugality, austereness and meditativeness that inevitably involves spectator’s state of mind within existing space and time. and I've also found a good thing about aging. that is, i have grown up enough to appreciate its ‘less is more’ aesthetics. i am now happy to be old (well, to be honest with you, only half of me).

destino cuba

la habana. that’s where i was leaving on the last day of my week-long package holiday 3 years ago yesterday. this unbearable steamy weather we’ve been recently having here in osaka is a bit of reminder of how i was covered in sweat when i was touring around cuba: the country where my forever hero, my forever heartthrob, che guevara, succeed the revolution. it had been my ultimate destination since i visited a korda’s exhibition, including that famous che’s icon, at the proud gallery in london. years later, the very first thing i actually saw in cuba from the round window was a billboard-like propaganda along the tall palm trees at holguín airport when the cubana aircraft was dropping half the passengers off before its final destination. the sign said ‘socialismo o muerte (socialism or death)’. as soon as i made it out it gave me a blow to my sleepy head. wow…
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on arrival at josé martí airport in la habana, i joined the group of three couples from the uk and our local guide, davel, and our driver, pupi. before going on a tour of cuba we stayed for 3 days at a hotel located in a suburb, forty-minute-drive away from the central area. i took a wander around the hotel and i happened to find ‘my place’ near the swimming pool. it was an airy lounge with caged birds. i thought the shabby décor, which got a cuban feel, was lovely and perfect. i’d go there to sit back alone, listening to the sweet birds singing in the late afternoons during my stay. funnily enough, i didn’t see anyone else showing up. only fidel greeted me shaking his compassionate fist as i walked down the corridor. his bonafide gesture made me more curious about the country’s future when his socialist regime ended.
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then, we hit the sizzling hot road to cienfuegos, sancti spíritus, trinidad and santa clara. everyplace we went we were supplied with good live music. and a necessary demand of generous tipping to follow, of course. time slipped into the last century in cuba. i wanted to miss nothing. i saw people hitch-hiking to work and home among coco-taxies, camellos, classic cars and trucks running in the city. cubanos willingly help one another. i meanwhile was busy spotting wild horses in hills and mango groves in sleepy villages from the car window. we experienced pretty much everything -- white pristine beaches with crystal-clear waters – showers and thunders -- frequent blackouts, mosquito-bites and heavenly mojitos that cooled my burning throat off. our visit to the sublime mausoleum, where che was reburied but his spirit still wandered around there, reached my personal climax of the tour. the next day, i said adios to my fellow travellers who were spending an extra chill-out week in varadero, while i was taking a night flight alone from la habana for london.
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on july 7th in 2005, the morning after i got back in london from cuba, something dreadful happened to londoners, which i did not notice until i switched on the tv. in four separate locations, london was attacked by islamic extremists who carried handmade bombs that caused hundreds of casualties. i promptly texted two of my expat friends who commuted by tube, making sure they were safe. they both texted me back, letting me know they were walking home in one piece. london’s public transport system was literally paralysed, while the traffic went chaotic. the whole city was left in a complete daze. ugh, what a day…

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like my fond memories of cuba are always associated with that day, many people can’t get over haunting memories of the 7/7 bombings, i suppose. has the situation progressed towards the better world for the last 3 years? all things considered i can’t be optimistic. what’s more we are now facing even more formidable and complicated obstacles such as the global warming and food shortages than ever. obviously, it’s not time for us to hate each other. cuba may be rigid enough to deal with this harsh situation far better than so-called rich countries, don’t you think?