Psychophant's Rants
21.8.10
Heavy shadow
When visiting Hiroshima, a heavy shadow laid on my heart, an undefined grief, settling from the surroundings of the dome. However the weight became almost overwhelming in intensity when watching the colourful braces of paper cranes, reaching the Children's Peace monument. There is something in Sadako Sasaki's history, her spirit, the cranes, that makes me wish we could blame someone but humankind.
Then you visit the Peace museum, and see the tiny cranes she was making, and then reflect that this was after war Japan, and surely paper was an expensive commodity, so she needed to make every cellophane sheet count, and it strikes you like a hammer. The museum is necessarily hard. Sadako is the perfectly weighted drop that ensures you pour out like a baby.
In other posts I have discussed tears and the kind of things that make me cry. Right now just seeing a folded crane (and there is one in my suitcase) will be enough. ¶ 3:16 PM
When visiting Hiroshima, a heavy shadow laid on my heart, an undefined grief, settling from the surroundings of the dome. However the weight became almost overwhelming in intensity when watching the colourful braces of paper cranes, reaching the Children's Peace monument. There is something in Sadako Sasaki's history, her spirit, the cranes, that makes me wish we could blame someone but humankind.
Then you visit the Peace museum, and see the tiny cranes she was making, and then reflect that this was after war Japan, and surely paper was an expensive commodity, so she needed to make every cellophane sheet count, and it strikes you like a hammer. The museum is necessarily hard. Sadako is the perfectly weighted drop that ensures you pour out like a baby.
In other posts I have discussed tears and the kind of things that make me cry. Right now just seeing a folded crane (and there is one in my suitcase) will be enough. ¶ 3:16 PM
20.8.10
Where has the moshi-moshi gone?
One of the things that struck me in Japan ten years ago was, besides the prevalence of mobile phones, to levels that not even Italians could match, the music of continual moshi-moshiing voices, people answering their phones. Combined with the pastel colors, the rhinestones and the hanging charms, it made the experience totally alien.
The rhinestones and the charms remain, and everyone and their grandfather (literally) has a phone now. And I know because that is what almost everyone is holding, watching, cradling. But I swear I have heard only twice moshi-moshi, and maybe five times that I have seen someone actually using the phone to speak. No, they just stare at it intently, and sometimes touch some buttons.
Related to it, another thing that I missed (much less than the actually charming moshi sound) were the manga readers in the subway. Even the usual suspects were just staring at their phones.
Nothing like several long train rides to watch people relax, and that allowed me to check that e-mail and instant messages were the main phone use, with a sparse use of GPS, TV watching, anime watching, news checking and revising the just made photos. Maybe the only use, besides speaking, that Spanish people use more is the photo function. And it is not that they do not use them, it is just that still many Japanese still take a full blooded camera with them when making tourism inside their own country.
One of the things that struck me in Japan ten years ago was, besides the prevalence of mobile phones, to levels that not even Italians could match, the music of continual moshi-moshiing voices, people answering their phones. Combined with the pastel colors, the rhinestones and the hanging charms, it made the experience totally alien.
The rhinestones and the charms remain, and everyone and their grandfather (literally) has a phone now. And I know because that is what almost everyone is holding, watching, cradling. But I swear I have heard only twice moshi-moshi, and maybe five times that I have seen someone actually using the phone to speak. No, they just stare at it intently, and sometimes touch some buttons.
Related to it, another thing that I missed (much less than the actually charming moshi sound) were the manga readers in the subway. Even the usual suspects were just staring at their phones.
Nothing like several long train rides to watch people relax, and that allowed me to check that e-mail and instant messages were the main phone use, with a sparse use of GPS, TV watching, anime watching, news checking and revising the just made photos. Maybe the only use, besides speaking, that Spanish people use more is the photo function. And it is not that they do not use them, it is just that still many Japanese still take a full blooded camera with them when making tourism inside their own country.
Considering how Japan is in many of these aspects slightly in advance with most of the world, I suppose most phone makers are watching this development. Certainly I find many new models difficult to talk with, which however is not a problem with the most typical Japanese ones. Maybe it is the makineko charms that guarantee communication.
¶ 3:11 PM
5.8.10
Biking
As part of my campaign to feel better, and to be healthier, I have started to ride a bike again. For now I use the bike service offered by the city, even if they are unwieldy as slow, because it is just what I need, a bike to remember how it was done, to go slow and steady.
As most kids of my time, I had a bike since I was 8 till I was 16. Then I stopped taking holidays with my parents, and my small red bike was inherited by my cousins. At times the summer holidays seemed straight from a book, a children pack riding bikes over the seaside cliffs into an old Roman quarry, looking for berries and adventure.
Then a long interval of eight years, with only a couple of rides in a loaned bike, till I went to Germany to visit my brother, studying in Heidelberg. He had a second bike, a steel monster made just after the war, and Heidelberg is a bike friendly city, if you discount the hills, so we rode everywhere. Those two weeks were quite fun, in a healthy way, but I was quite thinner and fitter back then. And the advantage of the rust monster was that it would be stolen only if there were no other bikes left. A certain comfort when you combine drink and ride.
After that, except for a brief episode in Copenhagen with their own tourist bikes (even worse than ours), I have not ridden a bike for twenty years. Many reasons, such as bike-unfriendly cities (though most are trying to improve), my own car, and lack of a bike.
There is a certain difference in the tiredness from walking and biking, besides the wobbly legs I still get. Walking I do not really get tired, only sore, and than only after several hours (I still try to walk over an hour a day). However, depending on the rythm, I can get sweating and panting in a few minutes on a bike, and unlike running, where stopping every two minutes would be ridiculous, you can take it easy in a bike after those bursts, just coasting along and going on a low gear. So if you are not in a hurry, you really have a lot of control on how tired, or in pain, you want to be. In that, it is a much better exercise system, as you can combine use with leisure, as needed, and even very tired you can limp back (unless you live at the top of a hill).
There is something nice, in moderation, in the exhausted feeling I have right now on my legs. A cottony cushion on a hint of pain, but with a sense of fulfillment, of doing what they were meant for. And tired people are peaceful people, talking softly, minimizing violence, and just cruising along, through that endorphin high.
It could be addictive, but I know once the body gets used to the punishment, it will cut my supply of self-made drugs. At least I am back in 65, and it takes a bit longer biking for the heartrate to climb. ¶ 10:28 PM
As part of my campaign to feel better, and to be healthier, I have started to ride a bike again. For now I use the bike service offered by the city, even if they are unwieldy as slow, because it is just what I need, a bike to remember how it was done, to go slow and steady.
As most kids of my time, I had a bike since I was 8 till I was 16. Then I stopped taking holidays with my parents, and my small red bike was inherited by my cousins. At times the summer holidays seemed straight from a book, a children pack riding bikes over the seaside cliffs into an old Roman quarry, looking for berries and adventure.
Then a long interval of eight years, with only a couple of rides in a loaned bike, till I went to Germany to visit my brother, studying in Heidelberg. He had a second bike, a steel monster made just after the war, and Heidelberg is a bike friendly city, if you discount the hills, so we rode everywhere. Those two weeks were quite fun, in a healthy way, but I was quite thinner and fitter back then. And the advantage of the rust monster was that it would be stolen only if there were no other bikes left. A certain comfort when you combine drink and ride.
After that, except for a brief episode in Copenhagen with their own tourist bikes (even worse than ours), I have not ridden a bike for twenty years. Many reasons, such as bike-unfriendly cities (though most are trying to improve), my own car, and lack of a bike.
There is a certain difference in the tiredness from walking and biking, besides the wobbly legs I still get. Walking I do not really get tired, only sore, and than only after several hours (I still try to walk over an hour a day). However, depending on the rythm, I can get sweating and panting in a few minutes on a bike, and unlike running, where stopping every two minutes would be ridiculous, you can take it easy in a bike after those bursts, just coasting along and going on a low gear. So if you are not in a hurry, you really have a lot of control on how tired, or in pain, you want to be. In that, it is a much better exercise system, as you can combine use with leisure, as needed, and even very tired you can limp back (unless you live at the top of a hill).
There is something nice, in moderation, in the exhausted feeling I have right now on my legs. A cottony cushion on a hint of pain, but with a sense of fulfillment, of doing what they were meant for. And tired people are peaceful people, talking softly, minimizing violence, and just cruising along, through that endorphin high.
It could be addictive, but I know once the body gets used to the punishment, it will cut my supply of self-made drugs. At least I am back in 65, and it takes a bit longer biking for the heartrate to climb. ¶ 10:28 PM
