Journeys for Knowledge

Art takes on new forms with each generation. What began long ago as an appreciation of the world around us has transformed into a view into places our imagination takes us beyond this world. My week in Tokyo encapsulated this in a way, beginning with the natural wonder of Chiyoda,  the nostalgic facade of Odaiba, leading into the newly opened exhibit of teamLab: Borderless. This exhibit claimed to present a new take of art, especially in the digital age, so naturally I had to see for myself.

At first I was a bit reductionist in my thinking, taking the exhibit to just be a bunch of fancy surfaces to project arbitrary imagery. The imagery was quite beautiful, and several of the isolated rooms were truly wonderful to walk through. However after walking through the dark corridors, I stopped thinking of the place as an exhibit, and began thinking of it as one continuous space. I noticed that patterns I had seen in one corridor were drifting into the central chamber, and characters that were confined to a hall were marching down the hallway. I had spent so much time figuring out how I would interact with the art, that I did not stop to think how the art might interact with itself. This made the experience much more exciting, as old places became new, and the combinations were the feature, not any one set piece.

The pinnacle of this was the LED room, filled with strings of LEDs from the ceiling, displaying all sorts of wondrous colors. However these colorful patterns were not random nor predetermined, but generated from input based on visitors using an app on their phone. Now not only was art interacting, but visitors were interacting through the art as well, resulting in some truly wonderful sequences.

That LED room was truly my favorite part of the whole exhibit, more so than bouncing giant balloons or coloring a sea turtle with crayons, only to see it come to life on the digital walls. It was an example of how art can move from beyond just being observed, but also participated in. It kept the visitor engaged in the moment, as so few attractions can do these days with distractions all around us. It was as fixating as a rainbow shining through the fog on a rainy day, to reveal the beauty that is all around us.

As mentioned in my last post, eisa is an important aspect of Okinawan culture. So much so that it has its own festival, the 10,000 Eisa Dancers Parade. The parade took place in the city of Naha, and is less of a full parade and more of a rotating show. Eisa groups from all over the island come to perform for the city, moving from station to station so that everyone has a chance to see every group. This was very similar to the dance festival I witnessed in Sapporo two years ago, at the end of my road trip there. Unlike Onna no Matsuri, the groups are not professionals, many are just local clubs or youth groups which organized into their own eisa group. This does not detract from the quality of their performance, in fact in some ways their more modern take on eisa was more approachable for outsiders. 

The new feature compared to last time that I was not expecting was the shisa dancers, two man teams running and rolling around to convey excited and playful shisa. After a while it was hard to remember that there were people inside this large furry animal, as it tried to swallow you whole. If the eisa performances at Onna no Matsuri were a testament to the pinnacle of eisa, then this parade was a celebration of its diversity. Though the art form may have arisen as a way to giving respect to the dead, it has now become a platform of expression for the living.

Right after my return from the US, our village of Onna was hosting its annual summer festival (matsuri). This festival brings with it a whole slew of activities, performances, and cuisines, culminating into a fireworks show. Most villages and towns large enough to organize a festival do so during the summer, as I have often seen their fireworks in the distance from my window.

However, it was exciting to be at the festival for a change, especially with the scores of eisa dancers who were performing for us. Eisa is a style of dance unique to Okinawa, using a combination of drums, chants, and synchronized dancing to convey respect to the ancestors. The tradition goes back hundreds of years, and is something that remains distinctly Okinawan, as opposed to Japanese. The finer details are rather complex, but at its heart eisa is a way to help the community feel together, and celebrate their shared humanity.

Fireworks on the other hand, are for sheer spectacle. I had forgotten how loud fireworks are up close, and how hard it is to capture them on camera. Perhaps next summer I’ll attend more summer festivals to practice my timing. Until then, there are lots of other places and events to explore in Okinawa.

In July I was given a rare chance to combine work with personal leave, attending conferences on magnetism close to home. The first of these conferences was at UC Davis, and was attended by a lot of students from the theoretical unit I work with. This put me in an interesting position, as both traveler and guide, with both home and work environments. Having my colleagues here also provided a fresh perspective on how life in the US is, and how much I have taken for granted.

One such thing was the price and availability of produce, which compared to Okinawa is dirt cheap. This combined with a gas grill at our guest house resulted in numerous BBQs, enjoying these fresh foods cooked simply. Outside of work and food, we also had the opportunity to drive close to the Sierras, giving my colleagues a taste of the natural wonder of California. Sly Lake wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but it was a nice quick step into the mountains where I had spent much of my childhood, and the last time I will see those forests some quite some time.

The past weekend I took a short trip to Tokyo to attend a friend’s wedding. However I had a spare day to explore, which I felt would best be served by a visit to Kamakura, a town close to the coast 1 hour south of Tokyo. The town is famous for being home to Daibutsu, one of the largest Buddha statues in the world. In reality Kamakura is a center for many spiritual practices, evidenced by the numerous temples and monasteries that are scattered throughout the hills surrounding the town.

Rather than just head straight for the main temple, I took a meandering path, discovering that many temples have back gates that lead into the hills, and connect to other temples. This allowed me to bypass much of the crowds, simply by walking through the woods from temple to temple. I never really knew what to expect around each bend, or over each hill, but in the end I only stopped walking because my shoes were wearing down. That was how entranced I was with the mystical nature of this town.

As I mentioned in December, I have begun taking some photos with my father’s Canon A1 film camera. The experience has taught me to savor every photo and to have patience with drafting each photograph as a memory, instead of taking pictures blindly and sorting them afterwards. A little more thought before the shot leads to far less processing afterwards. To take this training one step further, during my most recent trip home I loaded the camera with Kodak Ektar, which is a type of film specialized for landscapes, and has superb color reproduction. Using this film would require me to take really pick the right angle for each shot, since I only had one roll of it. The results I will let you judge for yourself, but overall I am satisfied with what I’ve learned from the challenge of film, and for the time being I will resume using my digital camera to see how much I have truly improved.

For the first time in my 4 years in Okinawa, I visited a Ryuku island other than Okinawa. Zamami island is a common destination, just a couple hours by ferry from Naha. Although gloomy clouds sent us off from the port, the skies parted by the afternoon revealing gorgeous islands just west of Okinawa. The island itself is incredibly small, but for the next two days we explored all the nooks and crannies it presented.

Most of the time the weather was quite calm, but on the one day we scheduled to go whale watching, a rain storm kept us trapped in our cabins all morning and afternoon. We did our best to salvage the sunset hours and evening stars, but by the time we returned home it was clear a second visit, with better weather, was absolutely necessary.

The dawn of the new year brought with it some exploration. Close to Cape Manza, a nearby lookout point, I followed a rocky road down to another cliff side closer to the water. The balance of clouds and sun in the sky illuminated the jagged rocks like an otherworldly landscape, an effect I tried to enhance by shooting some images in black and white. Some of my best photos were ones I converted into black and white during post-processing, but now I wanted replicate those shots by design instead of by chance. It was challenging to look at images with the intention of only seeing them in black and white, when the world is presented to you in color.

This trip to Tokyo was special for two big reasons. Firstly, these photos are the first photos taken on film with my father’s Canon A1 in over a decade. I asked to borrow the camera after our trip to India, and decided this trip to Tokyo was a good opportunity to put it through its paces. Secondly, the concert I was attending with my friends was the culmination of a dream also a decade in the making. Distant Worlds is a concert series that has been running for ten years, playing music from the Final Fantasy series with a live orchestra and in some cases live singers as well. As a long time video gamer it was a dream of mine to attend a concert like this, but to attend it in Tokyo with the original composers in attendance was an experience I will never forget.

To make things even sweeter, we even had time to stop by the Gundam Base, the center of all things related to Mobile Suit Gundam. The Gundam Base was featuring a new life size model of the RX-0, also known as the Unicorn Gundam, which is known for transforming between two states. The transformation does not happen often each day, so being able to witness it in person was also an absolute treat. The whole weekend was a celebration and affirmation of my passion for video games and anime, which I will carry with me everywhere I go.

The next morning we got back on the road, following the Shyok river in the opposite direction, east towards the Chinese border. Our destination was Pangong Lake, a source of the gorgeous glacial water accompanying us along the road. While the lake has recently become famous for its role in the final scene of Three Idiots, the serenity and beauty of the lake really speaks for itself. Ignoring the tourist traps, we found a spot to just appreciate the lake for itself, and the unique colors of its deep waters. The lake itself is actually split between India and China, so the Indian Army was not far behind. For the evening we stayed at the only hotel by the lake with concrete walls, but even that was not enough to keep the cold winds at bay.

Waking up to a frigid morning, we finally began the journey back to Leh, taking a lower pass that went around the mountains rather than over them. Passing by local farmers and settlements, I was relieved to be heading back home. I am sure in time I could adjust to life in the mountains, but my current role requires me to be more interconnected with society, and so it was time to return to work. There may come a time, one day, when I do return to the mountains as my ancestors once did, and withdraw from such a busy life.