Time Capsule # 1 (The Campfire Headphase)

You know that it must be the end of the year when Pitchfork starts releasing their annual "best of the year" staff lists. After an initial scan, this years "top 100 tracks" seems to follow the familiar formula: that is, a mix of ruthlessly obscure indie tracks cut against a smattering of Beyonce songs, only a few of which will make it through to the monolithic slash epoch-defining "best of the decade" list in eight years time. In any case, this years highly anticipated staff list have given me a fleeting moment of inspiration to stop laxing out in front of my heater in my pajamas, listening to chillwave and eating ice-cream, and actually write something. While I have a million things to say and show about Japan, this brief but nostalgic post is about a different time and a different place.   


I'm not entirely sure why or how it happened, but The Campfire Headphase, the third album by Scottish IMD duo Boards of Canada, became the soundtrack to our not so original backpacking adventures around Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand in early 2010. Whilst I still harbour fond memories towards my time spent on the tiny Island of Ko Tao especially, my lucid memories have faded, replaced by the general excess of being twenty something. It is rather fortunate then, that my camera has remembered for me. In these two videos - easily the sweetest things I've stumbled upon while searching through the mass of non-tangible clutter on computer - our blissed out dance moves are inspired by either the laxed out beats of "Peacock Tail" or the (epiphany inducing) "Dayvin Cowboy". 


It's difficult to tell if the first video is more ridiculous or hilarious. After five weeks of going to temples together, eating the same diarrhea inducing curries together, and generally cruising around the backpacker trail together, me and my trusty companions formed a relationship that can only be described as a "bromance". All semblance of pretense had been discarded (not including my scarf) as we climbed to the highest point of Ko Tao to admire the sublime views, before descending in the afternoon to the familiar routine of green curries, Chang beers, pool parties and just... general parties - in that order.


Watching this video, it's also impossible to not compare our two dances. Ants' trippy body-pulse definitely outshines my uninventive jump routine. Ants' dance is actually absurdly buzzy, full of random spaced out organic twitches, I was certainly spacing out to it at the time, If you listen carefully you can hear my uncontrollable snickering. It gets well strange at the very end though, when Ants stares into the camera with that intensely awkward look, although it's not as awkward as when I pass him the camera. This video certainly brings up nostalgic feelings, but it also creates a sense of anticipation, because next week I'm going to go through the same whirlwind routine again - excited much? Anyway, that is about the extent to which I can obsess over a single twenty second video, the main thing is just how much fun we are having.




This next video was either shot from a restaurant that evening or the next day, Ants is in fluid form once again, this time without beats though, I guess by this time he was on a completely natural buzz. Andrew too, gets among the spontaneous dancing (David Brent inspired?). Although it wasn't apparent to us at the time, random outbursts of dancing had crept into our day to day lives to the extent that we wouldn't even really talk anymore. Anyhow, I think I stopped the footage just before they started hooking up in the sunset. 




I guess I uploaded these videos to share them with Ants and Andrew more than anything else. If I can draw myself away from the heater anytime in the next week I might get down to writing some lists of my own, I'm sure I can manage it at least once. 


Peace out.


Tim 

PS. If you could jump from space and land on a surfboard, would you do it? 

Siegfried Sasoon V Bob Dylan

Two of the most discussed human beings on earth have died since I last wrote an entry into this blog, one in a slightly more unpleasant fashion than the other. Whilst Steven Jobs’ passing will be lamented for months to come (candidate for Time Person of the year much?), he will always be fondly remembered as the coolest and second most inventive dude to ever be involved in the computer industry.  Muammar Gaddafi on the other hand, will be remembered as the most heinous looking ‒ but not the first ‒ Middle Eastern dictator to ever be found hiding in the hole.  New Zealand also became Rugby World Cup champions, a moment which justifiably sent myself and a pub full of Kiwis into a wild fit of drunken hysterics. Unlike at home, there was no public holiday on Monday in Japan, so team-teaching for the the next few days can only be described as brutal death. This blog post isn’t about any of those things however. In fact, this is going to be my first non-adventure related post since I’ve been living in Japan – and what better topic to begin with than my very favourite obsession, Bob Dylan.

When you spend an entire year writing one ten thousand word dissertation, you spend a ridiculous amount of time settling on the opening sentence. Dozens of combinations are tested, cut-up, reorganised and scrapped. New, ostensibly brilliant phrases are thought up on the familiar journey from University to the nearest location with half decent coffee, but they are never written down, and are nothing but a distant memory by the time you’ve finished your flat white. Finally, at the very last minute, you decide to settle on one of the original phrases you scribbled down, only with the slightest of tweaks, which seems to mock an entire year of research and deliberation.  

“Mercurial, mutable and always in motion” was the opening phrase I settled on the night before I handed in my dissertation on Bob Dylan at the end of 2010. It is a phrase which at least begins to capture the sense of how he had, throughout his career, constantly resisted being reduced into a single genre or category – even when the image of him as a singer of protest songs had become fixed in the public imagination. As paranoid as ever, I checked and rechecked the spelling and grammar of the opening sentences long into the night with a near manic intensity, desperate to avoid the nightmare scenario of an early blemish, which surely would tarnish my work in the eyes of my moderators.

When I finally received my marked copy three months and several dozen parties later, those opening pages did, thankfully, turn out to be blemish free.  It’s far less difficult to focus on something if you find it interesting and Dylan is, and will remain above all else, a figure of intrigue.  

In 1959 he was a young, scrawny, and unknown Jew from an obsolete mining town in Minnesota.  By 1963 he was the darling of the American Civil Rights Movement, playing two songs at the March for Jobs and Freedom on Washington, the day of Martin Luther King Junior’s legendary “I Have a Dream” oration. By 1966 he was undisputedly one of the hippest human beings on earth, gallivanting around London, New York and San Francisco with the likes of John Lennon and Allen Ginsberg, singing his special brand of jaunty, cryptic and beatnik-inspired pop. Then, in 1969, when an entire generation gathered at Woodstock in what was the climax of the 1960’s countercultural revolution, he was nowhere to be found, tucked away in Nashville, with his wife that not even his closest of friends knew about.  

Even today, many of his songs remain pertinent to contemporary culture, roughly thirty of which could be called ‘classic’ – that is, imbedded into the collective consciousness of the general public. He remains not only an American, but an international cultural icon. His ‘fame’ is made all the more astonishing by the fact that he is a singer, who had (and has) absolutely no singing voice whatsoever – which only amplifies the significance of what he was saying, regardless of how he was saying it. His death, which is now surely not far away, will only cement his position as one of the most influential people in the 20^th century.

These  images of Dylan, set against the poem Suicide in the Trenches by famous World War One poet Sigfried Sasoon, begin to convey the dramatic shift that occurred in Dylan’s life (more specifically, changes in his worldview) in that scarcely believable period of creative intensity in the 1960s. Enjoy.    

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life with empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark. 

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With mice and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer as soldier lads march by,

Go home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go. 

Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfried Sassoon (1886 - 1967)

HAJET Central Welcome Party at Lake Shikotsuko, Hokkaido, August 21, 2011.

Sup. This is a party review I wrote for the "Polestar", the monthly magazine for HAJET members. The 'official' version only had two pictures though, so I thought I'd put it up here. It's not as laden with obscure vernacular, in jokes, and random tangential outbursts as a usual post, and it's written in third person also. But it did allow me to indulge in some mild HAJET propaganda. Thanks to Andy Suvoltos (the dude who wins the stocking battle) for taking photos when everyone else was too crunk to do it! Not that he wasn't crunk. Anyway, enjoy:

During the July 2011 Tokyo orientation, keynote speaker Stephen Woerner spoke about the “stage one euphoria” that new JET programme participants experience in their first few months in Japan. After this, Woerner asserted that “stage two culture shock” sets in as fresh faced participants become aware of the cultural differences ‒ rather than similarities ‒ present in their new living and working environment. Indeed, euphoric karaoke driven nights out in Tokyo and all you can eat (and drink) affairs in Sapporo are undeniably awesome experiences, especially if you’ve only been in Japan for a few weeks. The HAJET Central Welcome Party at the sublime Lake Shikotsu however, promised to be a different affair. One that would begin to acclimatise JET’s to Hokkaido, providing the information, friendships and networks that would be necessary to navigate the year ahead. Most significantly, for the inevitable onset of the Hokkaido winter, the ultimate “stage two” experience.

Essentially, the party can broken down into two segments. The first being an abundance of lakeside revelry and cheer on Saturday night. The second being a brutal Sunday morning downpour that soaked the tents, sleeping-bags and socks of many a hung-over camper. As a general rule however, most participants left Lake Shikotsu with the view that being placed in Hokkaido ‒ and the subsequent isolation from the rest of Japan ‒ will be an overwhelmingly positive opportunity. One that offers a wealth of people to meet, events to attend and activities to partake in, as long as you’re willing to travel the distance to get to the necessary location.

The ever enthusiastic Kyle Joregnson’s initiative of “Lakeside Olympics” provided an official start to the evening frivolities. Whilst his proposal was initially met with a wall of slightly tipsy apathy, his prevailing enthusiasm ensured that there were four teams ready for action when he opened the first bag of marshmallows for a game of “Chubby Bunny”, and hilarity ensued. To the delight of onlookers, participants had to shove as many marshmallows in their mouth as they could, whilst saying “Chubby Bunny”.

Round two was a slightly more civilised affair as contestants battled it out in a bubble blowing contest in front of a swarm of jeering assistant language teachers.

The third round was unambiguously vicious as Kyle whipped out a tarpaulin for sock wrestling. All four contestants had to dislodge the socks from their opponents using any means necessary, which was made more interesting as one of the participants was a Judo master.

The final round was again brutal, as contestants attempted to rip stockings off each other’s heads without using their hands.

By the time the sun had set several helpful members of the HAJET Council had barbequed yakotori and vegetables for the team, unanimously popular Prefectural Advisor John Shigeo McNie had made a fashionably late entrance and some outrageous bids had flown in for the HAJET bake-auction.

The camp manager was forced to politely nudge the increasingly merry revellers down to a more isolated part of the lakefront, and it was here that party attendees got stuck into the serious matter of drunkenly stumbling around the lakefront in the dark, making those introductions and conversations that just couldn’t be made in the sober light of day.

By the time the early hours of the morning came around several sizable beer-wands had been formed by the more passionate attendees, and liquor was being passed around freely.

Several revellers took to the lake for more whisky chugging and a verse or two of patriotic Canadian / American / British / New Zealand / Australian drinking-song. Most swimmers returned to the shore only to remember that that their one and only towel in Japan was situated in their apartment three hours drive away, and so promptly stumbled to bed. It was roughly around this point in the evening that the rather unfortunate event of someone being pushed into the lake with an I-phone in their pocket occurred, perhaps the only significant blight on an otherwise merry evening.

The rain on Sunday morning was so utterly ruthless that many a hung-over and soaked camper had packed and bailed to the camp shelter by 8am. The rain, which quickly turned small puddles into medium sized ponds, made for an atrocious companion to the hangover that was being collectively experienced by the campers. Again, HAJET members (you know who you are) proved invaluable as they cleaned up lakeside rubbish, tents and shepherded the slightly deranged campers of to the necessary public transportation outlets to get them back in time for Monday morning team-teaching. 

Many thanks must go out to all the HAJET members involved in organising such a sweet and easy-going event. With the friendships and networks forged, new ALT’s now have the tools to successfully navigate the year ahead and avoid the “stage two disillusionment” which was mentioned in the Tokyo orientation. We can only hope for more of the same in the coming weeks!

Chur, 


Tim. 

Welcome(d) to Hokkaido!

When I wrote the first entry to this blog in from an internet cafe in Saigon surrounded by hoards of little kids intensely cranking some online teen dancing game, I assumed that I would continue to regularly post new material when I returned home. Eighteen months and only five blog posts later, it seems that I never managed to fulfill those ‘lofty’ ambitions. Now that I’ve moved to Japan however, I have fresh material to post and I’ll endeavour to continue keep posting once I settle in - not that I’ll run out of sweet new things to write about anytime soon. But when I do, there’s plenty of non personal-adventure related topics to obsess over. Anyhow, this ironically titled blog is officially re-open, and I’ll do my best to keep it full of fresh material.

Much has cranked in the last month-and-a-half. Seriously, the weekends have blurred together already. Roughly 800 new English teachers attended the Tokyo orientation, which involved staying in the genuinely supple Keio Plaza hotel in Shinjuku district in central Tokyo for three nights, attending seminars on ‘how to teach’ during the day and cranking the central Tokyo nightlife in the evenings (after attending ‘functions’ at the New Zealand embassy full of red wine, pictures of John Key, and multiple speeches about not doing drugs in Japan because you will go to court and be deported and it will be a horrific and expensive and embarrassing experience).

The first day of orientation pretty much consisted of walking around the hotel in sweet attire and generally blissing out at the the massive chandeliers and grand function rooms. At some point during one of many Keio Plaza elevator rides to and from seminars, someone mumbled something about “making sure we get to see as much of Tokyo as we can”. Or, if I was being completely honest, it was more like: “my girlfriend came to this orientation last year and she said everyone should go wild in Tokyo because it’s awesome”. Challenge accepted.

I should mention at this point that there were a lot of rumours flying around in those elevators. From the blatantly untrue like: “oh my god I’m pretty sure this is the hotel where they filmed Lost in Translation”, to the potentially true : “I’m pretty sure this is where The Beatles stayed in the sixties” to the definitely true: “the Japan beauty contest is often held here”. Through all this however, the statement about cranking Tokyo stuck. It pretty much inspired a small epiphany within me. I was spending three nights in one of the most massive, fashionable and happening cities in the world with 800 other well dressed, well educated and like-minded people. In three days we would be shipped off to all corners of Japan, most of us to relatively small and isolated locations to teach English for a year. There really was no other option. So myself and some fellow comrades from the Wellington JET contingent - including two others from the same street that I used to live in (Epuni represent) - headed up to the bar on the fourty-somethinhgth floor for a drink and a view of the apparently never ending Tokyo skyline. Jetlag could wait,there were good times to be had.

I’ll get around to Tokyo in a later post; too many other good times are fresh in my mind right now. It was a bad buzz that the brief but cranking Tokyo times had to come to an end after only a few nights. Friends had been made however, and there would be more time to crank Tokyo later in the year. Some people were heading to their designated posting via train, but myself and the other new Hokkaido JETS had to mission it up to the norther hinterland on a plane. Hokkaido is roughly twenty percent of Japan's land mass, but only five percent of the population. It's full of premium ski-fields, national parks, bears, farms and Onsen (hot springs). So if there is any part of Japan that bears any resemblance to New Zealand, it's definitely Hokkaido. It's where all the supple fresh produce grows: non-radioactive produce that is.

Things get pretty trippy in winter too. The entire island gets plastered with powder that comes in from the vicious Siberian weather fronts to provide six months of white-out. Which could be utterly suitable to make you deranged, or, if you can ski slash board, it is pretty much awesome (so amped for the ski season!). So, if you're teaching on this island it's pretty much a separate community. Getting to mainland Honshu and beyond is fine, it's just going to be a bit of a mission getting in and out. Hanging out with other Hokkaido JETS is blatantly key if you want to enjoy yourself, especially if you want to survive the extreme winter. With that in mind everyone ripped in up and had an amazing time at Sapporo orientation also. Sapporo is such a sweet city, right in the middle is a massive garden which converts into a HUGE beer-garden come festival time, which is like, three or four times a year.

OK, so Tokyo and Sapporo orientation were awesome, as was getting to my apartment, meeting all my fellow staff at Shizunai, Shizunai agricultural, and Biratori High School and in general, getting used to being the only Westerner in my town. The introductory festivities were not over however. HAJET, a group of second and third year JETS, organised five welcome parties all across Hokkaido, five weekends in a row. Of all the welcome parties that I attended (three out of five) the second was the superlative affair. The party took place in a camp ground near the supple semi-alpine town of Noboribetsu, an hour or so South-west of Sapporo, famous all through Hokkaido for its supple Onsen. On this particular night there was a sweet festival (the 'hell festival) going on. By 8pm the streets had packed out with people dressed as daemons and other mischievous fiends. At some point during the drunken festivities, I stumbled down a side street and, to my delight, found a pack of people going absolutely nuts. These videos are a little dark and wobbly, but they still have the sense of euphoria that was present at the time. Pretty much the best fifteen minutes of Japan so far.

Seriously, how raging do those whistles and little trumpets make things? Everyone was going spastic, like Japan had just won the football world cup or something. Except we were actually celebrating hell/death in a small town in Hokkaido. It was like Cuba street carnival times 100 (but with no corn. Philip, what up). Raging times.

The festival took place down one, long lantern lined street. Earlier in the night the festival was 'opened' by the Mayor, then this dude in a Satan suit jumped up in this Olympic style flame thing.

Check him out! What a sweet part time job: being the guy that goes mental inside a Satan suit at a hell festival.

By this time the streets were well packed out. Unlike at home, there was no liquor ban so everyone was merry making in the streets.

Everyone was whipping out their traditional Japanese costumes. Authentic as bre:

By this stage, heaps of peeps had started up a soft but steady chant. At the time I didn't realise it was a precusor to the euphoric raging times that would happen later on. The parade was pretty boss also.

The rainbow marching band warrior school team was apparently a curtain raiser for more Satanic float revelry. This one was pretty chilled out, drinking from his little zen bowl.

Although I defs wouldn't let my (hypothetical) child hang out near this fiend.

As we were crusing up and down the streets this dude kept persuading us to buy these magical little balls he was selling. Heaps of kids were getting them so, despite the fact that we had no idea what they were, we picked some up.

Yeah, they were heinous. I Still have no idea what they were for. It only seemed natural at the time to eat one. Fail. They tasted like stale jelly. So heinous yet.... so shiny. What a bad buzz, just carrying around little shiny balls in a clear plastic bag for the rest of the night and just not knowing what to do with them. By this point the parade was getting well intense. This guy was getting all amped up on some kind of Lord of the Rings invading Gondor buzz. Not only was he standing up on the top of yet another Satan statue, he was also whipping it and cranking his whistle as a kind of bass line for the thirty or so chanting dudes below carrying him.

I'm pretty sure we bumped into the same guy later on, on far right. Potentially.

The sweetest thing about the whole festival though, was that everyone could just get amongst and revel. By the time the Satan floats settled down, everyone was getting into the drums. Grayson Gilmore much?

From seven till eleven it was all rage, but after that everyone just bailed all at the same time. The streets were pretty much empty, so we crused back to the camp site. The week before at the central welcome party we had gone for a crunken swim, but this time it got taken to the next level with a full on skinny dip. Represent.

PRE-DIP.

(DIP)

POST-DIP

Cleansed, but slightly cold, we still had a twenty minute walk along this creepy as bush path, so we turned it into a jog which was all good, and to our delight found that the camp ground was full of merry revelers, so the party continued into the wee hours of the morning.

Much respect goes out to all the entire HAJET posse for organising such a mint weekend. Respect must go to Tuan too, for giving me a ride there, and then dropping me home in Shizunai on his way back to Urakawa.

More to come soon.

Chur.

Tim.