Basic Black

Vancouver to Tokyo beauty and squalor

I've been so homesick for Vancouver's landscape lately. Some of my happiest memories are flying along on my mountain bike on the new seawall near Coal Harbour, the morning light on the North Shore mountains. Yes, it is beautiful. Terminal City encroaches on the rain forest edge, but sometimes I wish it were the other way - the trees marching down into the city, the bears fishing from the landings, the eagles picking off the rats in the alleys.

It hurts when I remember the crappy things in Vancouver - the Downtown East Side, ground zero Wastings and Pain Streets (Hastings and Main on the street signs). The loss of the Woodwards building. The chrome and concrete anonymity of the buildings.

Mark Mushet in The Tyee documents the abject landscape of Vancouver. Oh, the photos take me back. Vancouver, like Tokyo, has little architectural heritage. But unlike Tokyo, Vancouver never suffered earthquakes or firebombing like Tokyo did. The city simply lost its classic buildings to progress. Artist Michael Kluckner has drawn, painted and documented the loss of Vancouver's heritage and the grim development of the city.

Tokyo's so ugly. You can see Aoiko's photos of ugly Japan. You won't see a temple or garden amongst those images. Urban Japan, Kanto especially, is one big jumble of parking lots, rice paddies, housing developments, factories and office towers. Looking out of the train window on the Joban Line, you won't see any buildings more than 20 years old. Everything is relatively new but tatty. Tokyo itself has some fantastic modern architecture. Mark Brown documents the glorious new buildings and public spaces in Tokyo's 23 wards.

My favorites are Omotesando Hills with its ever changing lighting facade rippling behind the keyaki trees, the Tokyo Opera City Tower, the expanse of different stone and gravel vistas with water all around so peaceful; the gleaming golden unchi (poop) atop the Asahi Beer Hall, visible from the Sumida River.

My beloved Vansterdam, Puke Theatre Especial

Damn, I am sometimes intensely homesick. Bhead wrote this week about the fine art of Drunken Ninja Haiku, which is kind of like the Japanese tradition of 百人一着 which means One Hundred Poets, One Poem. B and Miss Spelt and some other poetical genii would sit around with the help of cider or beer, produce Anglo-haiku extemporaneously, the way Fujiwara no Narihira and his posse used to do.

Oh, and we used to do the single-vowel poetry challenge. Bhead played guitar or blues harp or whatever, and we had to make a poem using only one vowel sound. Demented fun.

Back before Dubyah made being Iraqi illegal, we used to join Sobey and some other folks at the Bagdhad Cafe on Commercial Drive, drink tea, play accordion, guitar, little axe, what have you, and B would go all Allan Ginsberg on us.

Next spring, we bang wrench on whatever bits of scrap metal we find out behind the warehouses on 1st Avenue, I make myself a banana seat special, and we ride downtown high on the sweet whackiness that was, is our wold of memories and realities and familiarity in the strangeness. Then we'll go for a cup of coffee at Turk's, busk in the Grandview Park and scare the chidlren with accordion music. Howzat?

Mixing it up in Canada and Japan

CBC is airing a multi-part series on The Current called "Mixed Blessings". You can read producer Lisa Khoo's article about it here.

I count myself double-lucky, because I have a mixed heritage - Scots-Irish and Mennonite. But because I resemble the stereotype of the "westerner" or typical Canadian in the eyes of many, the question of mixed culture rarely comes up. To a Japanese, I'm a foreigner first, a Canadian second. They never really ask me what makes me Canadian, or how I feel about it. Few other nationals do, for that matter. I'm so nondescript, so unmarked, it seems.

I've flip-flopped on the identity issue a few times. All through my childhood, I was drawn to either the German language culture of my mother's family, and fascinated by my father's origins in Scotland and Ireland, the interest fed by a family trip to Britain.

In some ways, I identify with mixed-race people, of course, not because of the colour issue, but because of the likelihood that they share the same cultural ambiguity that I do. However, a mixed-race person is more likely to be asked their "origins". Few people ask me.

There are many mixed heritage people in Japan's media, singer-songwriter Angela Aki, cute tv celebrity Becky, anthropologist and author Keibo Oiwa.  It's not news here in Japan that lots of people, famous and not so famous, are forging identities of their own.

The Mouth is gone, but the heart and the word live on

I was cojoled, provoked, prodded into reading at Thundering Word Heard, by T. Paul and Mark, and it was such a release. That must have been back in 2002 when I could walk from the house on 33rd Avenue to the Cafe Montmartre on Main Street. It was a trip to read my short fiction and I had a glimpse into the inspired, passionate world of words that drove T. Paul and his fellow poets. And boy, did he drive when we pulled Vancouvers artists out of  The Living Closet  with a crew of awesome folks who put blood, sweat, tears, paint and staples into the effort.　Ru's put up a memorial here.

I posted a version of the Prajna Paramita sutra last week. Well, here it is again,  Alan Ginsberg's translation and chant. Another bit of surfing took me to Alan Ginsberg live in London, where you can hear sound bites of Ginsberg reading the Heart Sutra. Big heart, light and love.

桜 Sakura in Vancouver

I'm at my desk at the office in Ota Ward, Tokyo, alone because my boss and colleagues are in a meeting. Ah, well, there isn't so much to do, so I'll do some prep for my junior high classes, check the news, peek at various forums.

Surfing around, looking for pictures of cherry trees for my laptop's wallpaper, I stumbled on Vancouver Sakura Diary on the Japan-Guide. Today's a rainy miserable Friday morning in Tokyo, but as I'm listening to CBC Radio One from Vancouver, Bill Richardson's talking about his book recommendation for the week, and the host describes a beautiful Thursday afternoon, just after 5pm, with the sun setting over downtown Vancouver. The Pacific Ocean just disappeared.

Princesses

On Sunday morning, I made it down to Vancouver from Wells, hung out at UberOma's house, had a nap and then headed south to Camp Alexandra at Crescent Beach where I had an appointment with some Sunshine Coast and Vancouver PiB (People in Black)You can read about them at Mukashi Kaigan.

M invited me to take part in a women's self defense and assertiveness training for a Sikh community womens group, Kaurs United. Sikh women are given the surname Kaur, which means princess, a heritage of a guru who sought to fight the prejudicial caste system. The guru's idea was, if all women took the name Kaur, they could drop their pasts and castes. Kaurs United is a youth group which promotes the values and inspiration of the Sikh community.

M and company had put in a Saturday session with the group, about 45 girls between 12 and 16 years old. On Sunday afternoon, round two, we put them through a lot of different ordeals, including escapes from grabs of all kinds - a grip on the wrist both one and two-handed, grabs from behind, choke holds and the like. They were shy at first, but you could see them become bolder.

Now, in my teaching career, I have taught children of all ages, from five to 50 from all countries, but this was my first opportunity to teach Canadian kids. They were ladies, really living up to the princess epithet - polite, gracious, assertive and demanding. They listened carefully to instruction, said please and thank you and held doors open for the "teachers", asked lots of questions, took turns at the training, and wanted to see more of what we could do. They provided me with a pleasant first experience of teaching Canadian children.

At the end of the afternoon, Mike volunteered us for randori, an open sparring using everything we had seen in the training and nothing, too. Wow. I haven't done something like this in a long time. In Japan, we hardly ever do this at any of the dojos I train at. Even at The Boss' training sessions, randori tends to be very controlled. He often has some shihan call up people to demonstrate what we've been training in for that session. But this was a free sparring at speed.

And was it ever cool! Maybe it's my cultural background of liberal thinking, but I really crave a less structured, more instinctive kind of movement. Less think and more move. It's just what I needed to loosen up. I'll have structure again in September. For now, I'm on holiday.

Bville

I'm underslept, but content, listening to CBC Radio from the kitchen and a storm coming up over Island Mountain looming over Wells, BC - see Yael with her guitar?

I've finally earned my moniker Mother Krank by reassembling Siri's cranky Raleigh 12 speed. She took the rear wheel off to carry it in the car, and wouldn't you know it, the wheel was a freaking 35 minute job to get back on there. It doesn't have a quick release, and when she took the wheel off, it likely was in low gear, which meant she got the chain all tangled while trying to get the wheel back on. On top of that, it's just a tight fit and fussy frame to squeeze the wheel in there. But I got it, borrowed a hex wrench from the Bear's Paw Cafe, and rode it out to Barkerville.

It's only six kilometres to Barkerville from Wells, but it's a long slow hill, requiring crank all the way. When I got there, I made a stop at the House Hotel saloon, had a cup of coffee, joined the Chinatown tour, and caught a show at The Theatre Royale. I missed the first show, The Dancing Girls of the Cariboo (dang!), but I caught An Afternoon with the Cariboo Dramatic Association. The skits, songs and pantomimes in the reviews are taken from the newspapers of the 1860s and 1870s in which the shows were advertised.

Wow, did I get nostalgic. The first song was Teaming up the Cariboo Road, a traditional song that pays tribute to the freight drivers who made the arduous trip from Yale to Barkerville during the height of the gold rush. This was a song that every 4th grader in Vancouver knew by rote, when I was a kid anyway. They also had us stand and sing God Save the Queen, facing Queen Victoria's picture, reminding me of my school days, singing Oh Canada and God Save the Queen to the maple leaf and QEII's picture in the school gymnasium.

Wells is a wealth of occult history. I'd bet BCers don't know that in the 1870s, 10,000 Chinese from Guandong Province lived in Barkerville, making them the largest ethnic group in the Cariboo. A curiousity ou see in Barkerville is the two hump camel motif on signage and advertising. This is a racial memory of an enterprising freight company that brought bactrian camels to the Cariboo region. They were awesome pack animals on the flat, but didn't last long because of the steep mountain trails didn't give them much purchase. When I was a kid in the 1970s, there were claims of camel sightings in the area.

During the show, a storm rattled through the valley and we got a hard rain and an electrical storm. I saw one of the strikes arc from peak to peak. When the storm was done, the town closed up, and I was surprised to find my bike had been moved under the eaves of the gate house. Thank you, whoever you are, Barkerville bicycle angel!

A lot less crankｙ on Valentine's Day

I'm much less cranky. Maybe it was the air pressure making me nuts. But last night I, after that big wind blew through Chibaraki, I was really energetic, staying up to midnight cooking, cleaning the kitchen and puttering. It was warm enough that I opened the balcony door and didn't feel chilled. Yay, spring's on her way!

Last night, I was worried I'd be cranky on the mat, and I was a bit, and I wanted to cry out of frustration with the technique. I mean, The Boss said, Forget technique. Kill the technique. M and I just shrugged and went to it.

But Sensei, I wanted to say, I'm a baby! I just barely get this stuff! And the guy next to me was shaking his head, some guy who speaks neither English nor Japanese, because when I said Good luck and gambare, he just shook his head.

Some under-judan like me kills the technique, it's infanticide. I mean, I haven't grokked the technique from the ryuha yet, so there isn't much to work with.

Ah, well.

After, I had a beer with some American Men in Black (visitors and a resident) and we talked a bit about training but more about life and home and things. Thanks again, L, L and B, for being great company. I only realized it afterwards, but that was their Valentine's dinner. These guys were away from their partners. You men in black are tough mo fos.

I was just getting homesick and thinking back to Valentine's Day in Vansterdam. When I lived there, I made a point of taking Bhead out to dinner. Hey, Bhead, and Dee too, if you're reading this, I'm raising a virtual glass of Okanagan red to you. Happy Valentine's Day, you weird beauties. I miss you!

Leaving Lotus Land

Beauty and Grim

There is so much to be thankful for in Vancouver - the light hitting the glass and steel monstrosities in False Creek was beautiful even if the buildings obscured the mountains, the way Vancouver people eschew clothing in the summer months, the liberty people enjoy here, girls holding hands and snogging in cafes, dreadlocked cami pants wearing guys smoking up in the street, the plethora of local beers, the variety and quality of foods in the markets and restaurants, the sustainablitity-minded businesses that promote local produce, the whacky bike communities promoting riding for pleasure and commuting. Wow.

But there are some stark and alarming changes in the city - the poverty is shameful. I saw so many toothless, sick, lame, and mentally ill people in the streets. Much worse than it was two years ago. I used to make a point of keeping a little extra in my pockets for people I know by name, and snackbars for those I didn't. But there were too many people to give to. I passed a young guy on Granville yesterday who looked forlorn and didn't beg me for change after the crowd ahead of me had refused him. I gave him a big smile and said hello, and he beamed.

Is Vancouver, or the province, so poor it can't help these people? You can read about poverty issues on The Tyee, which is the only news source I've found that has documented the plight of the poor in Vancouver.

My Community - The Drive Tribe

I spent the last few days off and on Commercial Drive, one of the first streets in Vancouver to have its own webpage. You can read about Summer In The City - The Art of Hiking in East Van to get an idea of the Drive and its environs. There, I had a chance to hang with Brycething, my dear weird friend and former roommate. I also encountered Rowan Lipkowitz, the only person I know who plays Britney Spears tunes at polka tempo on his previously enjoyed accordion.

Drive tribals have done amazing things You can see slam poet Shane Kyoczan at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.