Thursday, May 25, 2006

well, hello. while some of you have already given up hope and moved on to more exciting places, i congratulate those of you who are reading this. right now.
i wish i could say that i've been really busy and simply had no time to write anything..even if not a soul would believe it. it would at least be an excuse. i've decied to be honest instead and deliver the brutal and shocking truth: i'm a lazy git. while i've been spending ridiculuos amounts of time on last.fm and even more time on its IRC chat channel, i haven't exactly been productive. i went places, including the the very fun Kyoto (pix below) and i did stuff, such as going out a lot, eating, cooking, watching movies and all the other stuff you're compelled to do in a consumerist society.

i noticed that i seem to have changed a bit. i used to have lots of pseudo-spiritual notions, sparodic philosophy attacks and frequent d&m's (deep&meaningfuls [conversations not about food]for non-aussies) with those dear as well as with those completely unknown and periods of severe introspection and self-reflections. these days, i go to restaurants, drink, or sing a song at karaoke. or i go shopping.

so, what happened?? honestly! somebody please drop suggestions into that lovely shoutbox to the right of the giraffe's neck. back in my conspiracy theory days of free energy and illuminati world control, i would have suspected huge psytronic devices that use ultra-low frequency waves laden with 'consuming-thoughts'. or a subtle subconcious message to just pretty much buy everything in your sight.
avid readers of the now illegal Jan van Helsing might remember his chapter on japan: this country used to be quite a lot like bhutan now...isolated and extremely skeptic towards foreign influences. it was apparently also strictly opposed to consumerism and had a strong spirituality rooted in shinto and buddhism, which co-existed quite naturally here. this has all but disappeared and the new gods are called louis vuitton, rolex and burberry. the serenity of an old teahouse or the zen gardens can still be found, tho. hence, we (kete-chan, willierose, her brother will and i) made a trek to kyoto!!

we got there fairly late, 2 pm, as we had cheap tickets, NOT bullet train, which costs less than half but unfortunately takes about 3-4x as long..oh well. it's always an adventure. after an excting trainride (a young japanese guy started talking to us on the train..something very very rare!!) we arrived at a very very rainy kyoto. in fact, all of japan was soaked in constant showers that day i think. i was expecially impressed with the station: a huge futuristic something, clashing horribly with the 'ancient japan' image of kyoto but fantastic nonetheless. reminiscent of the kkl in lucerne, this is contemprorary architeture superlative let loose. not bad, if a little devoid of soul.

onwards to the world famous kinkaku-ji, an unesco world heritage site. drenched in rain and obscured with dark clouds, the gold-clad gem was a little less glorious than it probably is on a clear summer's day, but hey! what can you do? still tremendously pretty. there is a short loop around the garden, which takes about 30 minutes if you walk as slow as possible and a few stalls that sell the local sweets (i bought some mochi (sticky rice cake) sheets that are filled with cocoa paste and covered in cinnamon for the office, following the japanese omiyage, or souvenir, tradition).

after erring around for a bit, we find the fabulous ryoan-ji, THE zen garden. it is famous for its 15 rocks that are surrounded by raked sand and only 14 can ever be seen at one time from any angle you look at them. what a mindbender in the 13the century. it was really quite beautiful and serene, the rain and medieval achiteture reminding me of that one fighting scene in 'hero', where they battle each other in the rain to the sounds of an ancient chinese zither. great stuff.

here are some random snapshots in a slideshow. my favourite shot actually looks like a scene from the 12th century. i especially like the moss that looks like green velvet covering the ground and tree roots.a skinned kermit (with family) draped aross the temple grounds. ribbit. kete-chan took a few black and whites i liked with petrushka's borrowed camera (a thanks here to petra), one of the ground and one of the natividads. it was also cherry blossom season, coming to a wet end, so the cute little things looked a bit sad that day, which didn't stop us from taking pictures shamelessly of course. damn tourists.

we were gonna visit and bedrool many more fantastic temples and shrines, if they didn't have a 5-o'clock-is-bedtime-for-our-poor-little-temples policy, which forced us to retred unnautrally early but left us at least somewhat pacified, financially un-gutted and happy. a nice day.

to those who've been waiting for an email from me for ages please be patient. i will get back to you soon, esp. ratatosk. piisu

gg; 10:50 pm