Entries this day: Dang Ding RC Simon_and_Namiko_at_The_Pink_Cow Train_home

Dang

2:11pm JST Saturday 7 November 2009 (day 14472)

Anna did a lot of work in the garden, including tilling up soil to plant veggies, etc. I figured it would be good for a season and then let the grass grow back in the spring for summer activities (surfing, plus April BBQ), but turns out Soness surfs in the winter as well. Hmmm.

Anna re-installed the plastic pond, which looked awesome enough but I forgot Soness didn't want stagnant water there. I knew she wants a fountain, but why not both? thought I.

Ding

2:16pm JST Saturday 7 November 2009 (day 14472)

Though I really wanted to fix the garden today, Soness was like, "don't worry about it; I'll do it on Monday," when she heard how little free time I've had recently.

With that, and Anna's encouragement, I went to the beach for the first time in a while.

Went to the walls with sand around them and watched miniature avalanches pour sand down into the stream bed. I induced and harassed the avalanches a bit, enjoying watching nature dancing along balances of movement and stability, beauty and danger, potential and kinetic.

Went to the T bar and walked along the rocks, enjoyed watching a crab stay in place on a tetrapod despite water alternately pouring over and dripping off his shell. I went rock hopping after a bit, running briefly and thinking how cool I was and then stubbing my big right toe enough to rip the skin from the tip. The flap stayed attached at its bottom, so I simply washed it out and put the flap back under my toenail to hold it in place while the blood does its job.

But the washing had to wait, for when I got back to TJ Bike to grab my sandals to wear back after rinsing off my toe at the beach hose, I realized I had left my keys at home. So I skipped the wash until I walked home and got a towel, watching my sandy blood covered toe slowly dry to a sturdy adobe scab. Washed it off and out at home, toweled off, got some cereal, got my backpack and computer (on which I'm now typing), walked back to the beach (with keys), unlocked TJ Bike, then rode along the beach to where I could cross the big road on an overpass up which I enjoy riding cause TJ Bike has some low gears, then zooooom to the station and now I'm on the train.

RC

2:30pm JST Saturday 7 November 2009 (day 14472)

Today is RC. I'm going to arrive later than planned, but part of the commute includes a walk so I *might* be able to make up some time during that walk. It's scheduled for 8 minutes by Jorudan, but i walk pretty quickly, so we'll see (if I can walk quickly enough from Åìµþ (Station) to catch the next earlier train in Âç¼êÄ®)

2:36pm JST Saturday 7 November 2009 (day 14472)

Though I'm likely to be at least 30 minutes late, it might be even longer as the train has just emergency-stopped (between Yokohama and Kawasaki).

8:00pm JST Saturday 7 November 2009 (day 14472)

Talking about opression in most/all classes, today focused on Jewish oppression, about which I have a lot of negative feelings given what I've seen happening in Palestine. We had mini sessions to discharge about stuff; I was in a trio with Tatiana and Margaret, who spoke about stuff including that Tatiana studied middle east conflict as part of her schooling, so when it was my turn, I started with "actually, you may know more about it than I do, but" and I was going to be like "it's a really messed up situation, and the Israeli's hold all the power, " etc, and be rather intellectual, but Tatiana interrupted me, all "I wouldn't say that [I know more about it than you]; you went there."

And that just hit me. I fuckin' went there. And I just cried and cried for my full seven minutes, thinking about all the times I went through checkpoints between cities that are like international borders for Palestinians, but free passage to Americans; about the home demolition where I couldn't bear to go but Ben, Serena, Rochelle and some others went and got video of the devestated family pleading for the bulldozers to stop destroying their home (we had been on a tour of home demolitioned neighborhoods and the driver happened to get a call "there's one happening right now" but of course it was too late to do anything but watch); cried about the blockade built around Bethlehem around which Niveen had to sneak to get to her university; cried about Rachel C something dying by bulldozer trying to stop a home demoliton; cried about gaza being blockaded so no food nor water could go in as Israeli military jets bombed the shit out of the area; cried and cried and wasn't done after my seven minutes but spoke a little bit about the details for like 3 minutes; oh man there is so much.

And the fault is not with yer average Israeli citizen, nor even a hardcore zionist; it's with the warmongering corporations that make a smella lot of money by killing people.

Stop enabling killing. The money won't bring happiness.

- - - -

In other news, I have a crush on Mamiko's smile, eyes, voice, attention. She joined us for the first and second times last month and tonight respectively.

Simon and Namiko at The Pink Cow

12:58am JST Sunday 8 November 2009 (day 14473)

To welcome Simon to Tokyo while he and Namiko were picking up a fish tank for his gilled lizards, I bought him a spindle of 50 DVDs on which he will probably burn copies of Loose Change 2E with Japanese subs or Improbable Collapse which has more hard facts.

At The Pink Cow we gave away my third and second to last copies of Loose Change to Moonie and a guy flexing his Japanese skills with a girl at the next table. Simon had given me 10 copies to give away, and I've been doing so, slowly. He was like, "here's how you do it:" and stood up, walked two steps and put the DVD down on the table, "hey here's a free movie for you," and sat back down in his seat. They asked in Japanese "what is it?" and he replied in Japanese, "the truth about 9/11."

Hmm. I must admit that looked pretty easy. I was like, "aight; I just gotta get a DVD burner.." and Simon goes, well I'll keep burning them and sending them to you so fast your house will fill up if you don't give them away.." hahahahah awesome.

Moonie sat with us a bit as the delicious Pink Cow Buffet was winding down. I found out she's half Korean, and she found out I ripped U-Cow's head off during a fight with Ami. "You had a girlfriend??" and I was like, "yeah; I told you that!" but she assured me I hadn't. Hmmm strange. "Well, you never told him you're half Korean so there ya go," Simon tossed in there to balance it out.

Namiko is from Osaka, and Simon works in Osaka, but they live together in Kyoto, with a couple (soon to be a few) fish tanks. I don't remember if I heard what she does for work, but I think she said teaching English??? to elementary kids? man, where is my brain?

Last night they slept in the van in a carpark in Odaiba. They can't do that tonight as the van is full of fish tanks and equipment, but they'll sleep in a hotel where his friend is staying tonight. Somewhere really nice like the Regency Exquisite in Ginza (a name I just made up, but I know he said Ginza) so they should sleep well, once they get to sleep; it's his friend's last night in Japan, so I imagine they'll stay up late talking.

After finishing off the buffet (and I mean Simon scooped up the rest of the chicken and poured the rest of the spinach salad onto his plate (he's not fat; he's an ox)) we said bye to Moonie and saw U-Cow chillin' on the printer, so I grabbed him (at Simon's suggestiion) and after taking pictures of the stained glass windows outside The Pink Cow for Namiko to petition her sister who makes stained glass to make one for her, I took us all an indirect route to the station which turned out useful for Simon's art: he draws cars on occassion and we saw some tricked out Chevys and got pics of them and talked to the owners for a bit. One of the cars had IV Life on it, and I was like wtf? and then ohhh and explained to Namiko its meaning.

We kept on and then up the street past Apple Store and then down the left into the heart of the outskirts of culturally interesting Shibuya. We headed toward the heart and took a detour to ¥É¡¼¥ó¥­ where I figured there'd be some more interesting hair styles, but we didn't see more than girls with long curled hair flowing over long white fur coats tottering atop too tall high heels. I was hoping for some ¥®¥ã¡¼¥ë or even ¤ä¤Þ¤ó¤Ð, but didn't really see any. Ah well.

Back down along 109 (I guess we shoulda gone back to ¥»¥ó¥¿¡¼Æ»¤ê) and we crossed the street so we could cross again at Shibuya's scramble. It wasn't as scramblingly scramblicious as it woulda been a couple hours earlier; most peeps were heading toward the station (and home) with not so many heading out from the station toward antics.

Ah, I realized, and took us on a quick detour to Hachiko which Namiko named when she saw it, and Simon was like, "meh," but took our picture with their disposable camera. (They had forgotten their cameras until they were 20 minutes away from Kyoto.) Then headed up the steps to Ginza Line and dropped them off there.

Wow. It was great to see Simon, and great to meet Namiko.

Train home

1:36am JST Sunday 8 November 2009 (day 14473)

I made the last train in Shinagawa by 5 minutes. Was standing next to a girl who smiled at me when I accidentally bumped her hat with my elbow (while hanging in sleeping fashion from the handle) and little fantasies ran through my tired mind about hooking up with her or at least getting to sit down and have her snuggle up against my arm. We did smile at each other as we both sat down at the same time when two people got up, but with a person (angel?) between us who didn't get up. While watching a guy snoringly take up two or three spaces on the other side of the train, I was focusing on the guy to my left like, get up get up get up get up in my mind, and when he finally did, I didn't shift over to her cause I didn't want to give the wrong impression. I wanted her to shift over to me, but she only looked around sleepily and then went back to sleep as another guy sat down between us.

Turns out she and I both got off the train at Chigasaki, but we didn't speak (did we smile?) and I'm sure I'll never see her again.