arigato

it's strange to leave japan at 11am monday and get to chicago at 730am monday. i tried to stay up and force myself into the new time zone but alas here i am at 3am writing my blog, drinking coffee, getting ready for a humble yoga practice and power cleaning my house. i have 2 white cats who have had the run of the house for a month with friends just stopping in to feed them, so you can imagine the hair and dirt buildup. the luggage arrived safely without even a chopstick broken. it's good to be home, but it's so dirty here compared to tokyo. we had a lot of snow and it has been melting into the dirty sludge, creating a mess everywhere you go. something to get used to. many people don't care about garbage here either. often they throw garbage on the ground, the alleys full of flying trash and rats, and many people are too busy to pick up their dog's poo, which is really disgusting. one hand for the leash, one for the starbucks and cellphone.

my final day went by fast. i taught my last led class, which was expectedly small, it was a moon day, but many of my favorite students came to support me. in the evening, over 25 students led by katsu threw me a big sayonara party, which was very sweet. everyone was very kind to say goodbye and express their thanks, and present me with really nice gifts. gifts are so fun and a huge part of the culture. the gratitude in japan is top notch, it humbled me completely, and i felt especially shy because i do not feel comfortable being the guest of honor. we started at a western style restaurant katsu, jeff and i used to frequent, then half the party went home and the rest of us continued eating at a traditional japanese restaurant where we had many parties before. jeff got to eat the natto bowl with raw eggs one last time. it was a very classy send off. i am grateful for all that attended.

on the plane we were trying to make a top 5 list of things in tokyo. mine looked like this:
1-yasuko-emi's mom, my second host. she cooked for me every day for 6 weeks, often lunch as well. it was a true japanese culinary experience that i will never forget, and she was a spectacular and fun human being.
2-asakusa-old tokyo. the temple is the most beautiful, the town is so different from the rest of tokyo. great people watching, great vibe, great area. kappabashi, too.
3-the parties-thrown for me, jeff's birthday and kuma's birthday. katsu is one of the greatest organizers and human beings i have ever known.
4-mori museum of art-this museum blew my mind, and i enjoyed all of the art that i experienced in japan. tokyo city view is great, too as i went day and night.
5-harajuku-a really fun area just to walk around, shop, eat, whatever. i always felt comfortable there.

so thank you, tokyo-yoga, thank you, mindy, for hooking me up with this gig. thank you chama, for having me, yuka, emi & miyuki for hosting me, katsu, jane, zen and many others for befriending me and taking me around the city. special kisses to miho, eriko and kuma and a big arigato to all the students that worked so hard and made my job very fulfilling.

a whale of a time

we started in kappabashi today. this area is known as the restaurant business center. we intended to search for the plastic food company which was supposedly located in the niimi building, known for a 39 foot chef head atop the building. but on the way we saw more. much more. many buildings had giant strange sculptures on top. from weird birds and foxes to little girls and giant cockroaches. there was definitely a trend in large animals and food related building top sculptures. but the best one of all was a building where all 5 floor's porches were giant coffee cups in different colors. this area is where restaurant owners shop for goods for their businesses, everything from pots big enough to cook people in, to antique signs, and of course, the plastic food, which, by the way, we never located. even though we did find the 39 foot chef head. so we went across the river and saw the magnificent golden flame building, or better known by locals as the turd building. it's a strangely shaped building topped with a huge golden flame that is supposed to be the head on top of a freshly poured beer, but does actually look kind of like a gold turd. giant robotic crabs on buildings as well. then wandering into asakusa, my second time here, and glad to have more time to spend walking through the time warped streets of old edo. we found the comedy area with the vintage movie theatre showing japanese movies from the early 60s through the 70s. jeff was almost crying. and the horse betting areas and gamblers, the old winos, stuck in time, drinking outside falling down drunk, girlie movies with naked posters prominently displayed next to the old movie posters of japanese lesbians in action, old men just dazed at this. jeff laughing. me a bit creeped out by now. and we found a very original store, one i have never seen before in my life, a whale store combo restaurant. they had cans of different grades of whale and pull top sardine cans as well as fresh meat packaged beautifully, dried whale, whale blubber, oil, etc. interesting. of course jeff got a high grade can for home and a pull tab square can for now, which i will photograph as soon as he opens it, as i have never seen whale meat before.

i also found the hot tempura coated sweet beans i had been thinking about since i tried them with mindy 3 months ago, which there is only one stall in all of tokyo, selling one thing, same, for god knows how many years. so delicious. and jeff tried street food- osakan okonomiyaki, which is basically cabbage and noodles topped with fatty bacon slabs, bean sprouts, scrambled eggs, several types of dried fish, smothered in a sweet brown gravy topped with tons of mayonnaise. i just had to watch him eat, as i was stuffed from the bun and the purple sweet potato stuffed with cream cheese i had eaten earlier. and then we had some grilled mochi balls, which i thought were hazelnuts, but alas more dough.

these areas of tokyo are a treasure. you feel like you have stopped time, the buildings are all old and washed out looking, there is a calm and seedy air to it all, the people are very anti-fashion, which is refreshing after being in shibuya so long. a good way to cap off a very interesting trip.

all about laughter

so i finally made my way into the mori art museum, and what a delight it was. we probably spent 3 hours and could have stayed longer. it explored humor in contemporary art beginning with ancient japanese art 3000 b.c. through the edo period and then into the 60s through the present time with the subject broken into 4 categories-"anti-art and avant-garde laughter," "everyday laughter," "the flip side of laughter," and "deviant laughter." there was over 200 pieces by over 50 artists from around the world, many installations and video. i can't even begin to explain the many pieces, but some that stick out in my mind were a piece that was a bunch of dirty laundry that you look into and see a video of a guy spitting out coins, washing laundry with meat, eating cat food with his cat, and using a fish in his mouth to slurp though a straw, smoke, and brush the fish mouth afterwards. the artist was kimura taiyo. another one was a whole room of 100 g.i.joes, asian, american and english businessmen crawling on their bellies all over the plastic grass into buildings and each other, capturing the way they globally transcend boundaries, bumping into each other, bunching up in one place, bumping into walls, and running out of batteries, an ironic metaphor of reality. the artist was torimitsu momoyo and the original piece from 1990 had a full sized business man crawling the streets of tokyo and new york. and my favorite was of a teacher who taught spoon bending to the young students and the video was of each of the kids performing this feat, it is such a treat to watch their faces go from surprise to pride, to laughter. the artist was yamamoto takayuki. and another fave was a fat house talking about whether he is art or architecture, or wheter architecture is art. "can i be fat and also be art?" "are there fat houses?" by erwin wurm.
this museum was one of the best places i have gone in tokyo. the exhibits change regularly, so you can visit several times a year. a real treat for sure.

tomorrow back to asakusa, for i did not have the time to peruse the streets before. instead of a temple visit, we will walk the old edo streets.

i am finished teaching mysore. my body is happy. lots of pain. i have one led class on sunday, it's new moon day and there is no mysore. and that will be it for me. i leave the students to their teacher, who will leave again in a month and another teacher will come for 3 months. i wish them well. and a party on sunday night. sayonara.

there will likely be one or two more blog entries, then i will give the link to my home blog if you want to continue with the journey as i try to run my own astanga school in chicago.

where will i find the sweet bean buns?

what will i miss and what won't i miss when i leave here? it's hard to imagine how i am going to feel, if this experience has changed me or my perception in any way. i did notice i have been thinking about how to dress up my dog when i get home, and have gone in my first doggie boutique. i have begun to try to figure out where i will find the ingrediants for oden and onigiri, where can i get fresh fish, what kind to feed my kitties. where can i get kombu, and is it as good? where will i find the sweet bean buns?
whenever i return from a long trip in india, it takes me months to re-adjust to life and in some ways i am permanently changed. tokyo feels a bit like home, because it's somewhat "americanized" still, it's hard to know.

things i think i will miss
-definitely the food. noodle houses, sushi, the luxury of having good food at any time, anywhere. and the sweets here have totally stolen my heart. curry noodles and curry rice are things i never heard of until i came here, some of my favorites. where will i find the hot buns stuffed with sweet beans?
-the clean people, the clean streets. people bathe daily and wash the heck out of their streets in the wee hours each morning when i'm walking to the studio at 4 am.
-the way everyone and everything is organized. they wait in lines to get on trains, line up the left sides of escalators and always leave the right side for folks who want to climb up. there are lines for everything, and no one ever seems to get mad about anything
-the yoga students. as i have said many times, they are the hardest working, the kindest, and by far, the most respectful i have ever met. it makes my job a breeze and a joy.
-some of the music. although i don't like all of it, i do enjoy the rock and the jpop stuff.
-the shopping. you can get the most original things to wear, or for your house, or whatever. they have the best selection of shoes by far i have ever seen, the coolest clothes (as well as some of the worst) and anything goes as far as fashion is concerned. people know how to dress. and they have amazing hair, too.
-the weather. it's been very mild. just frequent rain, i can't really complain.
-the lack of crime. i can walk anywhere alone at 4am and not worry. no one seems to steal here, either.
-the clean-ass bathrooms, hot toilet seats, deep bath tubs

things i think i won't miss
-crowds. way too many people. the trains are a drag to ride between 5pm and 1am. and 7am to 10am. the streets are so full of people it's very hard to walk at a decent pace. especially when it rains and the umbrellas come out.
-the restaurant hours. you have to eat lunch between noon and 3, dinner after 6. and bars don't open until 730 pm.
-organizing garbage all the time. it's great that they recycle like mad, but hard for foreigners to throw out trash properly. there are barely any garbage cans anywhere, so sometimes you can be stuck carrying a cup for miles.
-hot cones, hot trains, hot busses, hot hot stores, hot restaurants.
-the coffee. pretty weak everywhere except for starbucks, which i hate having to support just because the coffee is strong and they have real cream.

those lists are kind of superficial, but that's how i feel right now. will i ever come back? in a new york minute if i get invited to teach again. to just vacation, it's not possible because it's far too expensive to stay here. it would be nice to see the rest of the country, but i wouldn't dream of returning unless i get the language down. it's not a very english friendly country, unfortunately. something to keep in mind if anyone out there plans on coming here. not like india, where english is one of the main languages.

but japan is cool, and i highly reccomend it.

i will miss them

i knew something was up yesterday in mysore class, because the normal early people were coming late and the latecomers were early and the room was packed so much we could not fit any more students, which is unusual. and the "clubbing" people were up through 7am, also unusual for a monday. i asked some people if it was holiday today, and i was right. founders day.

after class, we went to dhaba india again (really the best indian food outside of india, and even gives india a challenge) and walked around ginza. we went to the imperial palace and park, which wasn't much to see, but it was a lovely day. might as well suck it up, cause its way cold back at home. then we couldn't decide what to eat and spotted a conveyer belt sushi joint right in the ginza train terminal. you can get 2 large pieces of sushi for under a US buck. and talk about fresh. the fish market is just up the road from there. so you can stuff yourself silly for under 10 bucks. the waiter gave us an english menu and helped us out, which is always a welcome gesture, especially at the conveyer belts. it's difficult sometimes. most places have green powder you put in a glass and fill with hot water to make tea, squeeze wasabi on your plate if you like, a box of fresh un-colored ginger, and the choices of fish,veggies and soy are endless. i am very conservative, so i stick to the tuna, salmon,eel and tofu. but jeff likes anything slimy or different. and along came his dream sushi-a combo of natto (his very favorite) and okra. he always has dessert of ikura (fish eggs), but after, along came monk fish liver. he was a happy man indeed.

sunday we went to a popular restaurant called fujimamas. and i felt like i was no longer in japan. expensive, asian inspired western food with gratuity tacked on the tab. one coke costs almost 6 bucks. had to charge it. but it was worth it. delicious.

and yesterday was firestarter with jackie and the cedrics and little elvis at lush, the same club we went to before for supersnazz and fifi's birthday. i decided to stay in, but jeff had a great time. members of jackie and the cedrics befriended him and told him "we must keep in touch." they will be coming to the states in may.

i slept in today, but the 2 hours i stole were wasted in dreams of being late for teaching. nothing but stress. oh well.

today's class was pretty big. i am going to miss the students. they are very hard working and kind. i will miss the "arrigato gozai mas" when they enter and exit the room. i will miss the lack of questions and no arguments. i will miss the discipline, the oh-so-very clean feet from bathing daily. i will miss them. very much.

and masami gifted me for the 5th time with chocolate cake and cash to go out to a fancy japanese restaurant. she leaves for china tomorrow and i won't get to see her before i leave. very generous, very kind.

secret

i know i've been here too long because i saw a dog today and it was naked. which means he did not have clothes on. this is not a normal observation where i come from. something has happened to me.

recently we tried a recommended cheap thai restaurant. we were seated directly next to a hot cone. and jeff, who is into the weird and unknown, ordered the sunagimo ash plate. it looked nice, rich dark purple pieces amongst onions and spices. the texture was firm, and i was sure it was some sort of japanese root vegetable, maybe a lotus root cousin. jeff thought it was some sort of octopus or squid. i bit down on piece after piece trying to figure it out. and the next day we did a google search.

gizzards.

i ate gizzards. and they weren't bad,

but had i known...

like the time the mexican cooks at a restaurant i was working at many years ago begged me to eat one of their "special" tacos. they refused to tell me what it was.

tongue. and it was good,

but had i known....

friday we had the entire day planned around going to the shinjuku loft to see the amazing 10 piece james brown inspired funk band, "osaka monaurail." we walked a half an hour deep into the darkest areas of shinjuku-the escort services, naked bars with young yakuza wearing "goodfellas" inspired hip and cool black outfits with perfect hair hanging out in front of the hundreds of sex shops. we searched for "the loft". we had a good map, we were in the right area. and 30 more minutes go by. we are still searching, alley after alley, street after street, porn after porn. 30 more minutes. searching. no loft. we look in our book. loft is in 2B, which is a basement. now, if it's called "the loft" why is it in the basement? but then i remember reading that all the live clubs are underground because of strict noise laws. it begins to drizzle and gradually turns into a gentle pour. we pass one of the many "kleenex" passers-the dudes who give out tissue with advertisements on the streets everywhere here. he looks at jeff. he quietly says,

"colonel"

"colonel...sanders".

we get half a block away and realize he is commenting on jeff and his long grey beard, and there is a KFC right around the corner, i look at the colonel and see the resemblance. jeff looks. all he can say is "when i get home, i gotta dye the beard."

another 30 minutes pass. still no loft. it's pouring rain now, we have no umbrellas. there are thousands of people out. nothing but sex bars and neon and rain and people and jeff asks an usher where this place is. he does not know. we go to the main map next to the police box. they direct us, but still no luck. we go into a puppy store. not knowing why. they don't know either. we go to the club's sister club, a spoken word club called "loft plus one." they just point and we obey, but nothing. we go into a liquor store. and get pointed right to the club, which is not marked with any sign, not even in kanji. no address. we walked past it several times but there was no way we could have known it was there. and no one else seemed to know anything about it. we go into the club, present our i.d.s, get ready to shell out our 8000 yen (64 bucks) jeff asks "when is osaka monarail playing?" because we have to be up by 7 tomorrow. the girl looks at a piece of paper and says,

"secret".

secret. ok. like, how late?

"late"

like after midnight late or what?

"yes, late"

so we go to the other box and ask the same question.

"secret"

ok, we are from chicago and know about this gig and it's supposed to be a secret? the first 5 bands begin at 9 and then "secret" band. so that takes us into the 2am zone. a zone we cannot be in. because getting home at 3 or 4 and up at 7 is a bit hardcore, and i have had enough hardcore. we go home. soaked from the rain. and not much to talk about.

and jeff never has given up before when trying to find something. he came very close this time, but alas, we found the "secret" treasure. and saved 8000 yen. and went home to watch "the party" on our laptop with peter sellers.

coffee break

i'm taking a little break as i have not been doing very well this week. tokyo finally got to me. without going into details, what do you do when you mix 3 months of intense teaching, stress, bad eating, drinking, coffee, pranayama, massive quantities of humans, tiny spaces, language barriers, food roulette, giant televisions, christians shouting through megaphones, massive buildings with neon neon neon, ....well, i think you get the picture.

i hope to post a couple more times before leaving.
keep in touch

young masaharu

young masaharu, originally uploaded by bindifry.

is this photo just a coincidence or did tokyo-yoga copy young masaharu? do you love this? SO kawaii!

i think i'm finished feeling sad.
i hope. at least, for now.

thank you, Azusa, for the lovely sweets!

that's life

well i am down to my final days working in the studio here in tokyo, 12 more classes in 9 days. i have mixed feelings about this. it's hard to be part of a studio yet not part of a studio. it's a temporary thing, soon i leave and i may never see any of these people again. on one hand i have felt part of the family, but also very much a stranger, an outsider, a foreigner. i can not tell who truly likes me and who does not, because the japanese people do not let you know from their face, only their vibrations, which i can't always judge since i am hyper-sensitive. i have tried to help in the only ways i know how, making suggestions, trying to teach adjustments to the teachers in the studio by holding workshops, but very few attended. sometimes helping hurts and people just want to be left alone and do things their own way.

sometimes i hate being a yoga teacher. i may have said this before, i do not like to call myself a yoga teacher, because all i do is manipulate bodies and try to get students past their fears and monkey minds. so i am more like a combination of a sports coach and a cheerleader. it's too much responsibility for me to accept being any more than that. because my life is so imperfect, i would hate for anyone to follow in my footsteps other than basic asana practice, which i do know a lot about. just because it's been over 10 years, i practice 6 days a week, taught mysore style for almost 8, and have had a lot of training, mostly from 2 very good teachers, but i've checked out the spectrum of certified teachers at workshops, have been to mysore and studied a few times when they tour, so i pretty much know what i'm talking about.

but there's so much about teaching yoga that is very painful. and one big one is when a student gets hurt, one you really like a lot. and you feel responsible. did i push her too much? did i miss something? and why didn't she say anything before? or did she hurt herself? and what can i do for her now? stuff like that. everyone, yes every single person i know who practices astanga will get hurt, has gotten hurt, will always go through pain. part of the reason is the realignment of the body, part of it is practicing too hard, or not enough (if you do not have a daily practice, the risk of real injury is much higher) or simply practicing without bodily awareness or use of bandhas, which both take years to understand.

another thing that i have to constantly work on is attachment. when people disappear and i don't know why. after working hard with them over a long period of time. now i know i have to let this go or eventually it will eat me alive completely. it's just kind of hurtful. and you find out later they've gone to study elsewhere, which is fine. but you never know why they left. they never tell you so you can be sure not to make the "mistake" again. but i keep having to tell myself, "sometimes it's not you. sometimes it's them."

the photo is the new schedule for february for tokyo-yoga studio. i love it. i think it's wonderful. however, there are several super important faces missing from it. which saddens me. at any rate, it's been a very interesting experience teaching here. i have learned many things about myself, about japanese people, students, about life. and once again, i am grateful, but i am sad. but hey, that's life, right?

killing yourself to live

we couldn't decide where to spend the day on thursday because there is so much to do it is paralyzing. so i wrote 7 places on pieces of paper, folded them up and chose, the one that won was sushi conveyer belt in an area i am totally unfamiliar with. we found it easily even though we had to transfer trains, but decided to walk home, which was pretty funny because it took 2 1/2 hours without stopping. the upside to that was we got to see these legendary cemataries i've been hearing so much about. wow! they are so beautiful here, with lovely japanese trees and bonsai. the downside was that my legs and feet were screaming at me by the time i got home, and we had to go out to a show 2 hours after that, so what's the solution? super hot bath with lush bath bomb! did the trick and i was a new woman.

we're also trying to find out where the superbowl is showing at 8 in the morning monday. since the chicago bears are in it, it's kind of a huge deal for us, even though i loathe football. i'm kind of one of those bandwagon sports fans, when the cubs(baseball) were doing great a few years back i watched all the games and i of course watched 10 years of bulls basketball games during the reign of michael jordan. i think that is my favorite sport, cause it's easy to understand, fast paced, and the games are short. like hockey. but cricket....whoa. very difficult to understand and the games last from morning to night. but to the english, aussies and the indians, it's god.

last night i had a very intense dream about Amma , the hugging saint from kerala. and i believe it means something, because i have not talked about her to anyone in a long time, nor thought of her, seen a picture of her, since being in kerala last january. i think i need to find her. because the dream was hardcore profound. so i went to her site and the first line of the latest news was amma tour in japan. in may. but still, kind of weird. if you do not know about her, you should go to the link. she has done a lot of great things and is worth knowing about.

and i have discovered a totally delightful author who has written for spin, esquire and the new york times, and has 4 books out, each one i want to read, Chuck Klosterman . i am starting with "killing yourself to live", a road trip book about death and rock stars that is about chuck (think lester bangs) drives across america searching for answers and stories about rock stars and death. he first visits the chelsea hotel and tries to stay in room 100 like a billion other people, but the room had been turned into an apartment and he was quietly asked to please leave and not to write about it, because the chelsea hotel is more than famous for that night that nancy spungen was supposedly murdered by sid vicious. they spent a lot of time doing heroin in that room. then to the dakota, where john lennon was shot, mark chapman with 14 john cassettes in pocket, believing he himself was lennon, and than onto rhode island, a small city i can't remember the name, where 100 Great White rock fans burned to death. i'm only a few chapters into the book, but i am sure i will read all of his books, maybe even before i leave japan. his writing style is unpretentious and interesting, the kind of writer i aspire to be like. and i can totally relate to everything he talks about, although there often are obscure references that go a bit over my head, but hey, i don't know everything about music. anyhow, if your into this type of subject, check him out. he is known mostly for his book, "sex, drugs and cocoa puffs" but has written a couple others, "fargo-rock city", and "a decade of curious people and dangerous ideas."

fifi's birthday party

another extraordinary night of rock and roll. this time it was fifi's birthday party, he is a very famous guitar player from the band "firestarter", "teengenerate". he was spinning disco for the first couple hours with old american bandstand on the big screen. we met 4 very sweet young japanese fans who had to drive almost 2 hours to get there. one said he wished to be fifi's wife and gifted him with an abba single and and an abba knockoff group. another was a huge jonny thunders fan, so jeff went home and got him my new york doll dvd and the new dolls bootleg cd so he could copy them. we will get them back at the big "firestarter" show feb. 12th. when we got in the club, fifi was getting makeup applied by his artist. enoky, from "jackie and the cedrics", an extraordiary guitarist/one man band played, he was astounding. then some other dudes played, and then fifi played. he even asked jeff to play with them, but he did not! i can't believe he turned down such a chance of a lifetime. shochu! a little too much, or he would have been all over it. i wish he did, though. all in all, a really fun time, we were asked to sit with the boys from out of town and they served home made oden in the bar to everyone. jeff's first time. so happy, so fun, so lucky!