A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Taken and sent to me by a kind gentleman attending Worldcon:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v280/telophase14/brownartidea.jpg (in post-apocalyptic landscape, apparently)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v280/telophase14/worldcongorgeousrachelbrown.jpg (In front of Yokohama World's Largest Ferris Wheel, and I want you all to know that the photo was sent to me with the title already attached)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v280/telophase14/worldconbrownbuescherstanford.jpg (with Henson puppetteer Julianne Buescher and Henson exec Halle Stanford)

Oh, I forgot to mention: that's a black leather collar.

Last night I drank half a bottle of sake, then danced in the street.

In geta. (Japanese wooden clogs.)

The Harajuku outfit-- revealed!!!

1. A very tight black pleather (but high-quality pleather) lace-up corset with straps.

This gives the illusion that I have, not merely breasts, but BREASTS, and led to incidents like "May I take your photo again? You're very..." gaze drops, jerks back up... "boobalicious photogenic." And also a plaintive request to button my coat so we could have an actual conversation, as the guy I was speaking to confessed that he kept getting distracted.

2. A floor-length black coat with pleather (again, high-quality) elements, and at least eight large shiny buckles. Plus lots of straps and snaps and a slightly batlike collar. Picture Vash the Stampede's coat in black, basically, but sleeveless. If I walked quickly, it swept out behind me in perfect bishounen or Matrix or swashbuckling fashion.

3. Vanbraces! These are forearm sleeves with three large shiny buckles each and a thin black strap connecting them to the shoulders of the coat-- somewhat like Lust in FMA.

The rest of the outfit, being cobbled together from what I already had with me, consisted of black cotton pants, black hiking sandals, and black fuzzy socks to make said sandals look like regular shoes to a casual glance.

Stephanie put my hair up into a chignon, assisted by a French twist, two different types of black hairpins, hair clay, and gel. I wore a bit of face powder, red lipstick, and fire engine (Stephanie corrects, "fuck me") red nail polish.

The most remarkable thing about this get-up was not the attention it received, but how wearing it made me feel even before men started dropping at my feet and rushing up with cameras. The corset reminded me to use the perfect posture that my physical therapist is always nagging me about (my natural posture is something of an L-like slouch), the coat dragged on the floor unless I walked quickly and very erect, and the whole thing made me feel cool, elegant, sexy, and tall. Yes, tall!

Quite amazing. It was the first time I'd ever worn a costume (I have acted a bit, but only in contemporary plays) and I suddenly realized what actors mean by "getting into character."

It better not get lost in shipping.

I am about to leave Tokyo and go into a rural area, on the old Nakasendo road between Kyoto and Tokyo (then called Edo.) It used to be THE major road in Japan, and lined with inns because it took a week or more to traverse by foot or horseback. Some of those inns are still there, and we'll be staying in one. So I may not have net access for the next couple of days, until I get to Kyoto.

But before I have to rush out of here to ship this quite amazing outfit I bought in Harajuku, spiritual home of Tokyo's most stylish teenagers, to the USA before I check out of the hotel, I wanted to mention something:

Last night while walking back to the hotel, on a street which was otherwise completely silent and empty, I saw a man's collared, button-down shirt on a hanger on a lamp post. A well-fed, fluffy white cat was on a leash that was tied to the post right beneath the shirt's right sleeve, so the shirt appeared to be taking the cat for a walk.

I am having a hard tine getting net access, so I am way behind in recording what has been going on. Expect some out of order reports as I catch up.

A couple nights ago Stephanie and I were tired, so we decided to spend a quiet night in the hotel watching DVDs. But before putting in a DVD, we decided to check out Japanese TV. Two DVD-less hours later, we went to sleep. This is what we saw-- all in Japanese, but I translated a bit:

1. An international women's shot-put competition, held in Osaka. This was pretty amazing. I had previously not known what shot-put is: it's a very heavy-looking metal ball on a long wire, which you spin around your head until it spins you in a tight circle, heels digging a hole into the earth, and then release it to fly some ridiculous distance away. Those women were really built on the upper body, and it was great to watch.

ETA: Stephanie says that's actually the hammer throw.

(Speaking of women's upper bodies, a number of people at the con seemed quite hypnotized by mine, due to the spectacular outfit I had previously purchased in Harajuku and wore to the con. Several men asked to take my picture (and some women did too) and some of those asked if they could post it on their home page. Due to a language barrier, I momentarily thought one of them was asking if he could use it as a model for a figurine, but alas, no-- he just belonged to a figurine club and was indicating the home page on its business card.)

2. A sushi-eating contest. The contestants, three men, one of whom had matching green clothes, and hair, consumed plate after plate of conveyer-belt sushi in a leisurely fashion, with a loud DOING every time they finished a piece.

(We had conveyer belt sushi for lunch today. It was delicious! The sushi chefs stood in the middle of an enormous conveyer belt, bellowing (in Japanese) "Two uni for number thirty-nine!" HAIIIII!!!" My favorites were lush salmon striped in orange-pink and white like rock strata, a very nice tamago (egg omelet cooked in dashi), and cold but still fine and sweet unagi (sea eel-- not to be confused, as I did once, with usagi (rabbit.)

I did not care for the disturbingly cartilageneous crab salad or the natto roll, though Stephanie enjoyed both! A roll involving some fish and salmon eggs was also very good, and probably the first time I've enjoyed salmon eggs. We also got some nice broiled salmon-- finished by a chef with a blowtorch in either hand.)

3. An episode of an anime series I like, Naruto. It was the conclusion of the post-timeskip Sakura puppet battle of DOOM. Nothing can shamelessly break your heart like anime, and I especially liked the image of the lonely little boy with puppet jutsu, creating two life-size parent puppets after his own parents had died, and using magic marionette strings to make them embrace him. Awww!

4. A competitive glass-blowing show, in the style of "Top Chef" or "American Idol." This was fantastic and I think would do very well in American remake (probably in the works right now.) Four glass-blowes, three men and a woman, were first assigned to create donburi-- rice bowls-- in glass. One made an eel bowl, one made pork cutlets (tonkatsu) that doubled as a money box, one did a mixed one that doubled as a jewelry set (shrimp brooch, ginger rose ring, salmon egg bead necklace, etc.)

The last two continued to the final round, where they were tasked to create a goldfish bowl like none other. The methods were amazing, and the results were spectacular: the man did a fisherman's net with a crayfish peeking out inside a gold swirly bowl, all in a moat-dish with guppies in it. The woman did a three-tier planet thing with rings of Saturn! I kind of preferred his, but hers was the most spectacular and she won--Japan's newest Top Glassblower!

telophase posted a (too brief) account of our Koya-san trip. Check her LJ-- this isn't letting me cut-and-paste a link.

I forgot to mention that after our magnificent feast of rice, miso soup, tea, stewed vegetables, not-vegetable-of-the-ocean, sweet pickles with thin rice noodles, soba with dipping sauce and an orange slice, chewy mock-sashimi, mysterious glowing pink jello triangles tasting like dilute raspberry jello, tempura, eggplant (which I didn't eat), tofu (which I didn't eat either-- it had a strangely repulsive texture, like toothpaste), and grapes (fermented in the heat)-- we were informed that we should eat at a restaurant the next night, as the next night's meal would be identical.

The next night we set out. the International cafe of Mystery was closed. So was every other restaurant in town! So were most of the convenience stores. Though if we wanted to buy manga, T-shirts, sunglasses, or makeup, those stores were open. We finally ended up in a convenience store which, unlike most in Japan, was very poorly stocked. Shockingly, it had no bento. We depressedly poked at the pathetic offerings, grabbed two pastries, two mystery onigiri, a small thing of mystery fried stuff, and a packet of potato salad, and decided to eke out this meager meal by making sandwiches. What we first took for mayonnaise proved to be cream, so we decided to forego condiments and just buy ham and a loaf of bread.

On the way back to our room in the temple, Stephanie grabbed a melon soda and I got my addiction, the chalky-lemon sports drink Pocari Sweat ("The exact composition of human body fluid. Refreshing!") (The temple had an indoor drink vending machine. Of course. Also a mural of rowdy chubby monks engaged in raucous activities, such as playing with the rope-like white eyebrows of one monk, or sitting on an unhappy-looking tiger.)

Back in our room, we made the following discoveries:

1. The melon soda smelled like bubblegum and tasted like revolting chemicals.

2. One of the onigiri was both mysterious and inedible.

3. One of the fried things turned out, upon dissection, to be chicken. That was OK. The other was a scary mushy thing with black speckles. We didn't try it, and you wouldn't have either.

4. The "loaf of bread" turned out to contain stale whipped cream and balls of gelatinous apricot jelly, rendering it useless for sandwiches.

5. The pastries were awful and largely consisted of the same stale whipped cream as in the bread loaf-- which was ordinary bread, by the way.

6. The ham and potato salad were pretty good!

But overall the meal was awful: so we had our best and worst meals in Japan on successive days.

The next morning the monk inquired as to our dinner, and insisted that in fact, at least one restaurant in town had been open, and if we had only turned left at the tourist information office as was clearly marked upon the map, we would not have been forced to pathetically resort to the convenience store. At least I think that's what he said. However, such advice would have been useless even had it not been after the fact: I am certain that we also failed to find the tourist information office.

We just got back from Koya-san, a mountain town which is a center of Shingon Buddhism, and in which you must stay in a Buddhist monastery as there are no regular inns.　I had been there before in autumn, and it was quite beautiful, and the food in the monastery was excellent.

This time we stayed at a different monastery, and due to a rather nightmarish time getting there, involving being unable to get tickets on a non-smoking train car until a much later train came by, staggered into the monastery tired and grumpy. (I should mention that the last leg of a journey involving five trains, a subway, and a bus, was a cable car-- a funicular, to be precise.)

We were greeted by a voluble monk who looked rather like a Chinese statue of the Buddha-- round belly, round face, thick neck, round bald head. He chattered away in Japanese and a tiny bit of English, recommending a Japanese dessert (mochi) place after cunningly inquiring if I liked dumplings, and suggesting that we visit the International Cafe, run (he said in English) by an `International Man Of Mystery.`

Then he escorted us to our dinner, which was a cold (because we were two hours late) eleven-dish feast. Not counting rice, miso soup, and tea. He sat there and instructed us on how to sit (cross-legged, `samurai style. Like Tom Cruise!`) and on what everything was. In Japanese, mostly, which I barely speak. At one point he showed us a peculiar vegetable, scratched his head, named it in Japanese, but said he didn`t know how to explain what it was. Thinking it was a type of seaweed but not knowing that word, I asked, "Is it a vegetable of the ocean?" That got a laugh and a no. I am still not sure what it was-- it was shaped like a canned pineapple ring and looked somewhat like one, but translucent yellow-white, in a thick translucent sauce-- but I am sure that whatever it was, I don`t like it.

But the rest of the meal was lavish and terrific, though portions,　like the faintly glowing pink gelatin triangle, seemed to be the sort of thing which might give me superpowers after I ate it. My favorite dishes were stewed pumpkin, which normally I hate, some pickled things, and tempura which included squash, lotus root, and some large flower.

Sadly, that was the best I did with Japanese, to the great disappointment of the monk. Every subsequent tinme I saw him was first thing in the morning, before coffee, when my listening skills were at a low ebb and my speaking was nil. However, he did give me a very nice parting souvenir-- a Buddhist dorje pinky ring. I shall treasure it.

We missed the lunar ecipse, though we did see a very brilliant moon with a copper corona, the aftereffect. But the meal was so good, and its setting-- a huge hall with painted scrolls of birds and a tiger staute-- was so cool-- that we didn't much care.

The next day we visited the amazing 2000-year-old cemetary, Okunoin, in an ancient cedar forest. The trees were enormously tall and mossy, and the interior, older parts of the cemetary were full of toppled moss-covered tombstones, stone torii gates with ferns sprouting from them, and statues of Jizo, who watches out for babies, in little red bibs, shocking bright against all the green and brown. The more recent parts of the cemetary were atmospheric in a different way. There were several tombs of company men and women, with memorial giant stone coffee mugs (for coffee company employees) and a huge stone rocket ship, I assume for an astronaut. No doubt that will become very picturesque in a hundred years when the moss covers it.

Unfortunately, it turned out that my mutant power was attracting mosquitos. They ignored Stephanie and attacked me, and sent me fleeing the more moist and dank portions of the cemetery, with a ravening dark cloud in hot pursuit. I went to a pharmacy later and all I had to do was say "Mushi" (bug) and the counter-lady immediately handed me a tube of bug bite soother, which she had right on the counter. (And when I added "Bug go away," she had no trouble understanding that either.)

We are now back in Tokyo, about which I will write more later. This internet cafe is very smoky, though, so I have to sign off now. Well, one last thing, before I forget. Men in Tokyo seem very comfortable with their masculinity, so much so that they do not feel, for example, that anyone might look askance at a young man in jeans and T-shirt, carrying a silver lame purse.

Yesterday I had what I believe was the very strangest moment of my whole entire life. As those of you who have read my memoir know, that is saying a lot.

It all began when we went to Asakusa in the hope of finding traditional Japanese handicrafts, or something like that. But when we exited the subway station, we were surprised to see huge crowds crowding along the road, with police keeping order. Clearly, a parade was about to begin.

I asked the police what was going on, but as has been my all-too-common experience lately, I knew enough Japanese to ask the question, but not enough to understand the answer. I tried asking, "Is it a festival?" The word I used for festival, "matsuri" does mean literally that, but generally means "Traditional Japanese festival," like the one where they parade a giant wooden penis down the streets, or the one which the guidebook mentioned without explanation as "the bean-throwing festival."

"Yes, a matsuri," replied the cop.

"Which matsuri?" I asked.

The cop said what I thought was "sanban"-- "number three." "The third festival?" I repeated bewilderedly.

Stephanie rescued me. "Samba," she explained.

Indeed, we were just in time for the Japanese samba festival!

( And that wasn't even the strange part )

We arroved last night, and had a somewhat-- actually, very-- nightmarish trip when the Narita Express was first delayed twenty minutes, then got stuck for two hours with us on it. I have never had that happen before.

About to depart for a department store, Stephanie in tow.