So I'm in Japan. 

I know.  JAPAN!!

I guess I never thought I would actually get here… it's funny how we carry around whole worlds in our heads–our future, goals, prejudices, fantasies–and then we get confronted by reality.  And reality is always SOOO different from these cities in our minds.  Different color.  Different feeling.  Different everything. 

First, let me say, I'm loving it here.  Even though Tokyo was hotter than hell, and moved at a ridiculous speed, there is a strange peace within it all.  It seems like there is a poise in the Japanese character that is inherently soothing.  It lets you relax.  It makes me realize that, in North America, many of us wear our personalities on our sleeves, pushing pushing pushing our "selves" into the public domain, dirtying up the collective with our ego pollution.  Japan is quieter than that.  You don't hear loud conversations on the subway.  You don't even hear cell phone calls–they're not acceptable.  Everyone basically keeps to themselves, whether that means playing a game on their phone or sleeping on the train, they are just a quieter, more polite crew. 

I'm old enough to appreciate that.  Maybe we should all spend our twenties in New York, and our sixties in Sapporo. 

I feel like a slob here.  EVERYONE dresses like they care.  It's strange–there doesn't seem to be one pervasive style (although "cute"–"ka waii" in Japanese–is a very big word here) but no one gets up in the morning and just throws on a layer of clothing mindlessly.  Like some redheaded macrobiotic bloggers do.  Everyone seems to have made conscious choices, whether it's the salary men in their suits, or the "rebel" setting his perfectly tousled hair, or the woman in the kimono, there is a certain yang committment to every choice .   

I've eaten some good food.  Not just the Japanese fare–excellent ramen, killer sushi–but I've been to a couple of macrobiotic restaurants that left me singing with joy.  There's nothing like a long flight, bad jetlag and 95 degree heat to make me appreciate the power of healthy food. 

We are now in Hokkaido, the big island to the Northeast of the main island.  We caught this evening's sunset from a huge ferris wheel.  Which happened to be on the roof of a department store.  A department store that included a bowling alley.  

I would post photos but my computer doesn't seem to want to do that right now. 

More to come… 

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 26th, 2010 at 9:18 am and is filed under Blog, My Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I just don’t understand Strawberry People .  I just don’t.  I don’t GET wanting to eat a berry that makes me feel like I’m French kissing a cat .  Call me crazy.

This time of year is so hard.  My beloved raspberries  come out to play and I am once again reminded of just how deeply and purely I love them.  And then my ugly prejudice against Strawberries rears its head . 

I can’t help it.  Strawberries get soooo much attention.  We’re just expected to love them, without question. Strawberries dominate the berry world like an arrogant, strutting bully.  Dare I suggest we live in a veritable Strawarchy? The dominant ideology of our culture is inherently pro-Strawberry and yet this discourse is rarely challenged.  So here goes:

Strawberries are the anti-Raspberry!  Whereas seeds cover the outside of the Straw, they are neatly and modestly tucked away inside the sexy, juicy bulbs of the Raz.  Whereas the Straws are firm and dry, a lovely Raz is soft and fuzzy.  Where Straws have this woody, white interior, the elegant Raz is brilliantly empty like Nature’s cute little thimble .  Just the right size to fit the tip of one’s tongue .  HOW CAN YOU GET BETTER THAN THAT???

I know this isn’t cool. Or PC.  I know it’s not all balanced and macrobiotic, in which the thinking is to accept BOTH, as the yin and yang to one another.  BUT I JUST CAN’T.  Strawberries are… wrong.  There.  I said it.  And the people who eat prefer them to my precious raspberry should be put in Strawberry Jails.  Guarded by thousands of Strawberry Shortcake dolls  .  And a lifetime supply of strawberry-flavored lip balm .   And their cell mate?  That’s right. … Darryl Strawberry. 

Teehee.  When I pull my tongue out of my cheek, I will stick it in a… you guessed it… raspberry.

My advice to my fellow Raspberry People is to do the following.  Place half a cup of our ripe loved ones in a bowl.  Add a tiny pinch of salt.  Massage until about most of the berries become mushy (you need to get to the Raz juice to really enjoy the Raz).  Add 1 teaspoon of brown rice syrup and stir it in thoroughly.  Raise a spoonful to your nose… mmm… close your eyes… place this bright red nectar-of-the-Gods in your mouth and enjoy your inherently superior taste. 

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 7:11 pm and is filed under Blog, My Life, Photos, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

When I was a kid, being curious  was the gold standard in my father’s house.  "He’s a nice guy, but he’s just not… curious" my Dad would say, about my, or a sister’s, prospective boyfriend.   That was the kiss of death.  He could be ugly, unemployed, a fascist… but lacking curiosity??? A dealbreaker.  

I would always sit there, listening to this complaint about others and felt I should quietly stick up my index finger and interrupt: "Um… excuse me… I’m not exactly CURIOUS myself."  But of course, I didn’t do that.  I feared expulsion from The Curious Family.  But I KNEW that I was not willing to haul myself up from the TV  to the reference library just a block away from my house  to get answers to any questions bobbing like apples in my head.  I wasn’t going to seek out some obscure text book  to satisfy some mental itch.  I mean, this was the 70s .  You had to put a little elbow-grease into information-gathering back then.  I was perfectly satisfied to build my mental world given the information afforded me by ABC, CBS and NBC .  I just didn’t go around bragging about it.

But you see, these days, with the internet, I’ve come to realize the truth.  I AM CURIOUS!!  I AM A FULLY-FLEDGED MEMBER OF THE CURIOUS FAMILY!!  I BELONG!!!!  I mean, I will leap up in the middle of a dinner party (mine, not someone elses–that’s rude) and google a factoid we’re all slobbering after.  I routinely hide my iphone under the table during a meeting to find out how old Ben Affleck is .  I can’t go to sleep at night until I know where Micronesia is .  I CARE ABOUT THESE THINGS.   And these days, all my little mental itches get scratched!   HEY DAD, I AM FREAKIN’ CURIOUS!!!

So I guess I judged myself wrongly all these years.  I was brimming over with curiosity! 

I was just lazy . 

I say all this because I’m blogging today about my friend Neil’s dog-training classes on DailyOM.  They’re called "How to Speak so Your Dog will Listen".  I’ve written about Neil before and I really believe very deeply in what he does.  It’s like macrobiotic thinking applied to dogs!  And as I was giving this post a title, I thought "I wonder where the term ‘dog days of summer’ comes from?"

Why?  Because I’m… that’s right… CURIOUS. 

And not only did I learn that we are smack dab in the middle of said "Dog Days" right now, but that they are called that because the brightest star of the Constellation Canis Major (Big Dog) , which is called Sirius (not the radio) is up to something a little tricky… get this:

"In the summer, Sirius, the ‘dog star’, rises and sets with the sun.  During late July Sirius is in conjunction with the sun, and the ancients believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather.  They named this period of time, from 20 days before the conjunction to 20 days after, ‘dog day’ after the dog star. (from http://wilstar.com/dogdays.htm).

As Paris Hilton , who often carries a dog in her purse, would say:  Hot. 

Check out Neil’s classes at DailyOM and enjoy these Dog Days. 

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Blog, My Life, Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.