River Life

You never know what kind of life you'll run into on the river. Dogs and cats are no surprise, but it's always a special day when you can see a baby goat dressed up and river rats checking out the cherry blossoms.

Sunday Struttin'

As far as a I can tell, these guys dance to rockabilly in front of City Hall every Sunday afternoon. With slicked hair, scuffed shoes, and a formidable boombox, they dance individually in a small rotating circle to almost no fanfare. A couple friends quietly sit and watch. These guys dance with a controlled intensity, one that is recaptured after every short break and sustained throughout the afternoon. The music, the clothes, and the dancing would be nostalgic for someone who grew up seeing Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis on TV, but it is more likely these guys were part of the Stray Cats generation. I have seen larger groups in Nagoya and Tokyo, always doing more or less the same thing in a very public place. I bet every major city has at least a few groups. You can go so far as to call this a sub-culture, one that has now come full-circle after brief periods of mainstream popularity. Hats off to the brave three of Kyoto.

Roof Beams

All kinds of people work on weekends. Employees of restaurants or stores are expected to do so, as well as police officers, fire fighters, and teachers with papers to grade. Sometimes it comes with the job, and sometimes it doesn't. It's not rare to see a few business suits walking with briefcases on a Saturday or Sunday, but lately, they've been outnumbered. Donning paint-splattered canvas bell-bottoms, layers of sweaters, and scratched up helmets, dozens of construction workers come in to work on the unfinished buildings on my street alone. When I bike to the grocery store, I pass a crane reaching high up into an apartment building, complete with a pair of workers directing bike and pedestrian traffic around the site. It's a similar scene in other parts of the city as well.
The word around town says it's all related to the consumption tax going up this April. Projects are being pushed along, things need to be done sooner before the cost goes up, which means working weekends for a lot more people. It all starts to make sense, but questions loom. When April does come around, will we see a drop off in the amount of construction work being done? Is that why so many workers are willing to work on snowy Sunday mornings? As noisy and irritating as they can be at times, I can't help but admire their dedication, and hope it all pays off for them.

Christmas Eve Mission

Christmas Eve began with a mission, a tag team journey to the happiest burger this side of the International Dateline: Smile Burger. It was cold, more so than usual, and the sun was making its way down past the distant shadows in the western part of the city. There was a buzz in the campus air, the unique kind reserved for the beginning of an extended break, with chatter of trips and gatherings, and not of upcoming tests nor reports. But we were different, we had a mission.
We biked through 400 meters of foot traffic, followed the river, broke multiple traffic codes of the Sanjo bus terminal, and got a rainy, up-close view of the shops and umbrella wielding tourists of Gion. Hung a left on a small road, and up a hill we went for a few minutes, the cold refusing to let us slow our pace. We reached the main road at the top of the hill, full of traffic and tourists as always. Smile Burger was just a block away and it was still early, but unfortunately it was also Tuesday. As the metal shutter pulled down in front of the store said, they're closed every Tuesday.
So we compromised. We settled for a far inferior fast food burger that really couldn't be any further from a Smile Burger. But it's Christmas Eve, and that's where the minuses end. The food and the restaurant were warm, and we settled right in for over an hour, into the plastic seats on the second floor above the storefront. As I watched our illegally-parked bicycles (and a dozen more) being rained on outside, I thought about this burger. Yes, it tastes the same here as it does back home, and probably just about everywhere else in the world. It's a nostalgic taste, and I'm all the more impressed with the human digestive system when I think about how many I (we?) had growing up. But when I'm tasting it, I can't help but think that the last one I had was probably at the Staples Center while watching the Kings, and it probably cost $11. The price aside, that made me happy. It could have been a coke, a bag of peanuts, or chocolate-covered popcorn to take me back, but this time it was that distinct, internationally reproducible taste.
We went back up the hill to Smile Burger a few nights later. It was rainier and colder, but that really only made it more delicious.

Push

Last week's break in the school schedule brought a few days of down-beat in a semester that's been very up-beat. With the school lounge, library, and dining commons closed, the McDonald's around every corner was a very capable substitute. With its second and third floors, smoking section, light speed service, and bossa nova in the background, it would seem completely unrelated to its American twin if it weren't for the food. Some people sit for hours, punching into a laptop, flipping through stacks of folders and books, or thumbing away on a smart phone. This atmosphere is subject to change of course, as it's not uncommon to find throngs of high school students doing lots of talking and very little studying. Business professional, studying student, or high school chatterbox, it's pretty clear that quite a few people go there to do something besides eat.
My first November break in five years is followed by the nostalgic short push through the weeks leading up to the holidays. A push through lengthy assignments, cold morning bike rides to school, late night rides home, and everything in between. Beanies, scarves, instant noodles, and slow-cooked broths should do the trick. No sign yet of the first snow of the season, but the temperature will be down to 0 Celsius a few days this week.

Test to Test

Test week comes to an end tomorrow, but the studies will continue to be in full-swing. The Japanese language proficiency test is laying in wait at the beginning of next month, ready to dry my eyes, drain my brain, steal my heart, and take up four hours of my Sunday afternoon. Luckily, we have a few days off this week for the anniversary of our school's founding. While I intend to partake in a few school festivities with my Jo Niijima mustache, and upon completing all assigned homework, I plan on devoting a significant amount of time to vocabulary and advanced grammar. There should also be time for some long awaited visits to Mt. Hiei, Daitokuji, and Kitano Tenmangu. Sharpen the pencils and heat up the coffee, it's game time.

Free Books

The first floor of the School of Commerce was lined with about three dozen cardboard boxes, all filled with books that seemed to have fulfilled their roles in the curriculum, but did not garner enough demand to be re-sold and re-used. Or maybe there's a faculty member who is simply a nice person and likes to give people free books. Posted signs saying "Free books, take as many as you like." would suggest one or the other, but based on the selection, I would guess it was the former.
There were countless handbooks to accounting, four inches thick, and even analyses of past markets, global and domestic. Making our way swiftly through the boxes before our Japanese literature class upstairs, my friend from Taiwan picked up a book on English conversation, the curly fry in a basket of regular fries. I stuffed my bag with two books, one on the history of the American television between 1925-1941, and the other on advertising in Japan in the 1980's.

With mornings and nights regularly below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, I now have plenty of excuses to stay in, drink hot tea, study, and of course get a lot of extra-curricular reading done. There is also a lot of gathering, cooking, and baking to be done. We're still waiting for hints of the first snow this season, with simultaneous feelings of excitement and fear. Will the snow be as beautiful without a warm car to drive around in? Or will it be even more calming now that I don't have to drive around in it?