At the roof of the world

Aichi summer is a good indication to us godless heathens what awaits in the next life. The heat is bad, but the humidity makes every moment outside of an air conditioner’s radius a struggle against the sweat of 120 million people.

Tsuna and I tried to get away from the sauna last weekend by traveling to Togakushi in Nagano prefecture. Togakushi is a shrine town near Nagano city, located on some small stretches of flat land 1200 meters above sea level. For over a thousand years, the mountain area has been revered as a centre for both Buddhism and Shinto. Pilgrims still come to the five shrines on the mountain to chant sutras, some hiking for eight hours from Zenkoji down below in Nagano city. However, it’s not only its religious ties that made Togakushi stand out. The area is famed as being a hideout and training area for Nishina Daisuke, a founder of the Togakure Ryu ninja school.

These days, the day-trippers, hikers and skiers outnumber the pilgrims and ninja by a vast majority. Tsuna first came to the area in her Girl Scout days to learn how to ski. Her ski instructor also runs the ‘Lamp café’ near the town centre, so visiting him (for Tsuna) and trying out his coffee (for me) were high on our list of priorities. Both were successful. Once the surprise of the reunion had passed, my wife and he spent some time reminiscing about Girl Scouts both past and present. I, on the other hand, was enjoying the coffee and chocolate cake. There’s a dairy pasture further up the mountain, so the milk and the cream in Togakushi were much fresher than the stuff we get from the supermarket.

After we said our goodbyes, we followed the map printout to our ryokan for the night. The ‘Yokokura Ryokan’ has been in business since the Meiji period (mid 19th century), but there’s been a smaller side temple on the spot since Heian times (12th /13th century). Many of the ryokans in Togakushi used to be side temples to the main shrines back in a time where pilgrimages were more common. The building itself was both in good condition and in need of renovation. The bathroom and toilets were pretty up-to-date, although there were some stains in the guest rooms that might have dated back to the Meiji as well. My main complaint with the place (and Togakushi) was the multitude of flying insects, but the town is right next to a forest and a multitude of mountain streams. I don’t imagine any of the pricier ryokans would have been any different.

On our first day in town we didn’t do too much. We checked out Chusha Shrine and ‘Lamp’ before having a good dinner at the ryokan and then heading to bed. The next morning we woke a few minutes after 6:00, had a Japanese breakfast and got ready for a half-day hike up the mountain. Only a couple of days before, a group of hikers had gotten lost and died of hypothermia on a three-day hike up in the mountains we were heading to. Of course, no one had decided to inform me of this fact until we had already gotten to Togakushi, so I was neither forewarned nor forearmed. Luckily, the weather held and we stuck to the path to survive to make another blog update.

Our first destination was Okusha and Kuzuryusha shrines at the top of the mountain. It was a three kilometer hike through along the road with some shortcuts through forest tracks. Every so often we would come across a moss-encrusted lamp or statue by the track. The bigger ones had a small plaque that explained why it was there and what it symbolized. The smaller ones further off road had no such signs, leaving it up to Tsuna and I to come up with our own explanations.

We reached the entrance to the two upper shrines near the Togakushi campsite, but we still had a lot of walking to do. It was a 1 and 1/2 kilometres walk from the entrance to the main Tori gate, followed by another 1 and 1/2 kilometres up the mountain to reach the shrine. The path was bordered by towering red cedar trees that kept the path in shade and cool for the climb up. At that time of the morning there were not that many tourists or pilgrims, so it seemed like we had the mountain to ourselves.

Tsuna and I often scream “Snake!” when we hike to see if we can get the other to jump. Since coming to Japan, the only time I’ve seen a serpent has been after it had become road kill. When we reached the final approach to the two upper shrines and the trees parted to allow some sunlight to reach the path, Tsuna didn’t yell “Snake!” We’ve both become immune to it after so many times. She just told me to not move and look down. A long brown and yellow snake had been enjoying the morning sun two steps up from us and was now slithering off into the undergrowth by the path. I wouldn’t say that I’m scared because: a) Japanese snakes are non-lethal and b) they feed us snake venom in Australia from the cradle to build up immunity. Still, I did spend the rest of the nature hike with at least one eye to the ground.

So back to the shrines!

They seemed to be partially built into the mountain, as the room inside the shrine was larger than the outside shrine itself. There are a total of 33 caves in the area, so I wouldn’t be surprised if these shrines had been built from the homes of monks who meditated up in the mountains. I can understand why they came here to meditate. The view of the mountainside was something inspiring. Peeking over the roof of Okusha shrine were the upper ridges and peaks of Mt. Togakushi and Kuzuryu. They phased in and out of view as clouds passed between the top and us. I must have taken twenty photos of the mountains from different vantage points, much to my wife’s annoyance.


We headed back down the mountain and took a detour to Kagami lake, which in the morning and evening becomes a giant water mirror. We arrived a bit too late for that, but the view was pretty enough to make the walk through bear country worth it. It was nearly midday at this point, and both Tsuna and I were getting pretty hungry for some Togakushi zaru soba. On the hike back we came across a rock with a pool in the middle of it by the cliff side. From the cliff we had an amazing view of the Northern Alps, where some of the mountains still had patches of snow near their summits. As for the rock, it is called Suzuri ishi and anyone who dips a writing instrument in the small pool will be granted a gift with words. If I had hauled my Macbook Pro along on the hike, it might have been baptized then and there.

We managed to get back into town in time for some brief souvenir shopping and rest before the bus. The trip back to Nagoya was nightmarish and one that I have no particular desire to go into here. However, I really enjoyed our time up in the roof of the world. Hopefully we will be going back there next year too.

Evangelion 2.0: You can (not) advance

I saw the new Evangelion movie on Monday and I thought I could write a few words about my impressions. A caveat to all readers is that all subsequent views are from a fan boy whose Japanese skills can best be described as ‘shocking.’

The previous movie, “Evangelion 1.0: You are (not) alone” was a streamlined take on the beginning of the TV series, with much better animation and more invasive product placement. Although a few new scenes were added and parts of the story were moved around to make things make sense in the context of a movie, the story remained as canon as Shinji’s SDAT stuck on loop. The new movie throws the previously established story out the window (or into a garbage can, as is the case with the SDAT) in the first five minutes with a new Evangelion, a new pilot and a new angel in Antarctica. The time line for this movie spans from the introduction of Asuka to the highpoint of the 14th Angel fight- a lot of story and five angels to cover in two and a bit hours.

I feel the urge to treat this movie as if it were an animated fanfic, talking about who is out of character and so forth. But I will soldier on without giving a total list of all the things I thought were cool (something I’ll write once this is all done). There is a surprising amount of character moments in the movie, considering how much they have to fit in. Shinji, Asuka and Rei all have their moments in the sun, along with the supporting characters. Asuka has a lot of new scenes to herself which make her a much more sympathetic character. Even PenPen gets a fair bit of screen time.

The new character of Mari is certainly a presence in the movie and has a lot to do, although it’s mainly away from the main cast. A lot of the famous scenes from the show and manga are recycled, often involving different characters and sometimes much different outcomes.

I had some problems with the music choices in the later part of the movie, and the double whammy of the 13th and 14th Angel felt drawn out and tiring. I would also have preferred more time with the established cast rather than Mari, who while interesting enough takes up too much screen time.

As for the things they changed… by the end of the last battle, the TV show and the movies have seemingly diverged. People are dead, Evangelions are destroyed and the only thing standing in the way of Third Impact is the last thing NERV can trust. Yet there is, undoubtedly, a love story in there, too. Whether it survives a third movie reboot will have to wait for a few years for us to find out.

The Eva movies so far can be summed up as “Boy meets girl. Boy meets giant robot. Boy uses giant robot to save the girl, even if it dooms the world.” The characters are different, but in the end it’s still following the path laid down in the TV series.

Maybe I should just go ahead and start a gaming blog...

My name is Blake Wilson and, it’s been half a year since I’ve played “World of Warcraft.”

If you’re reading a blog like this, you probably have played the game or at least know the basics. You level up, complete quests and raid, with bouts of farming and mind-numbing reputation grinding to support your adventures. Most MMPORGs have the unending drive to get better armor and cooler-looking weapons, as well as the social aspect of working with other players to take down raid bosses. What distinguishes WoW from games such as Everquest and Eve Online is the relative easy of entry, smooth progression, stylized presentation and the addictive qualities of popping bubble-wrap.

It’s this addictiveness that’s the rub. I can more or less guarantee that WoW players all have at least one moment of shame worth talking about- from flying into nerd rage over loot distribution, spending more time with in-game friends than living, breathing ones to putting off important dates/anniversaries/work deadlines in order to keep playing. It’s a game that ruins lives, marriages and is the cause of a number of deaths in Korea to date.

My own story takes place in Molten Core, where I got my first epic item. What seemed like a minor inconvenience at the time was that in real-life, I was amazingly hangover and playing with a bucket next to my computer in case I had to puke during the raid. I remember thinking at the time that I couldn’t back down from my commitment and that without me the raid would be down one healer. This was more important than staying in bed until I could hold down breakfast.

It’s this social aspect that drives the game at its best and makes it insufferable at its worst. It’s not hard to find a guild of like-minded people in game, and even the most boring aspects of the game are fun when joking around with friends over Ventrillo.

I first got interested in the game in 2005 or so, after seeing the box at a friend’s house and reading up about it on the web. It was not long until it had started to consume most of my available free time. I essentially gave up all other video games and TV in the first few months, and by the time I was preparing for my first trip to Japan it was biting into my reading and writing moments too.

This was all before the first expansion, and things were a lot more difficult and brutal than they are now. The grind up to the-then final level took months of repetitive game play that would have driven me away faster than real work had I not fallen in with a bunch of good people. I was also playing a Paladin at the time, which was barely useful in a raid and not even that outside of one. Most of my enjoyment of the game at that time came from talking to and playing with my friends and guildmates, who were witty, generous and wielded phat loots.

My separation from the game began in late 2006. Before this, I would never have said that I was hardcore or l33t. When a game involves spend more time looking at spreadsheets of item drops and auction values than killing things, even I can walk away. It’s the main reason I’ve never gotten into EVE Online, despite many of the crazy stories I regularly hear coming out of that game. I think a more apt phrase for me would have been “dedicated, but not particularly good.” I would regularly finish my night job, then go home and play until 8AM the next morning. After a few hours of sleep, I was ready to go to my afternoon job and continue the cycle. I didn’t get very far into the end game content before the aforementioned great bunch of people turned into a squabbling gaggle of children and the guild collapsed around me.

After this, I kind of lost heart. I was also planning to move to Japan to start work and a new life. When I did finally make it to the island chain responsible for 10% of the world’s coolest things and 50% of the most bizarre, screwed up stuff, I was unable to have a computer of my own or an internet connection for a period of seven months. In that time I began dating the girl I would one-day marry, travel the length and breadth of central Honshu, meet new people and on occasions too frequent to be good for my health, be drunk under the table by them. Yet despite this, I still hungered for my online fantasy adventure even in the midst of my real life one.

I finally got back into the game in July of 2007. The group of people I once played with had moved on, and my character was still where he had been when I was packing my bags to move. I sought a fresh start by joining a new guild with a new level one character, but the close-knit fellowship I had experienced before was gone. Some of it may have been that they were level 70 and I was starting all over again, or perhaps I had already gotten too used to concentrating time better spent on gaming on such trivial things as relationships and career. For my second run through the game, I was essentially playing a massively-online multiplayer game by myself.

Fast forward this chain of events to a year and a half later. The “Wrath of the Lich King” expansion was out, the content had never been better and I was already level 80. However, I would regularly log on and spend the next few hours riding or flying around the landscape, playing purely out of habit. The game had lost its spark for me, and it had done so a while ago. I hadn’t even peeped inside the previous game’s content, let alone the newer stuff. I checked my friends list and saw that most of the characters listed could no longer be found, either deleted or transferred somewhere most exciting than a role-playing server.

The party was over, but I was the poor sap who was still drinking in the corner by himself.

One of my favorite quotes is that “It’s easy to quit WoW; I’ve done it 20 times already!” I have had smaller breaks before, when work or real life became too persistent to ignore. I was inevitably pulled back in by nostalgia, new content or the lack of any better alternative thing to do. However, this time I’ve been clean for more than half a year and of my own free will too. I’ve boot camped my Mac in order to catch up on all the great games I’ve missed since 2005, such as the Half Life 2 series, Portal, Peggle, Left 4 Dead amongst others. But most of all, as a married man I don’t have the time or energy to stare at a computer screen until 4:40 in the morning, surrounded by half empty cups of coffee, bread crumbs and a phone that no longer rings.

This is Blake, formely Buzwell, signing off

The Unofficial Official Wedding Photo

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Originally uploaded by OmegaBlake.

Cheers Les. Your obsessive snap-shotting finally payed off :-)

The Takedas

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Originally uploaded by OmegaBlake.

The Wilsons

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Originally uploaded by OmegaBlake.

From left to right- Shaquille, Debbie, Tsuna, Dad, Yours Truly, Kieran, Mum, Terry, Phylis and Callum

My modestly-sized, slender Japanese wedding

Greetings;

When I last left this blog, I was about to leave my house to get married. Then there was a two month break in which I didn't write anything. Never fear, I didn't resort to my backup plan and escape to Pakistan. Tsuna and I got married on the 8th of March, 2008 with only minimal screw-ups on my part.

After two months, the events of the day have blurred together into a motley of camera flashes and 'kampaiis.' I will try and put things in order as best I can.

My best man and I arrived two hours early to get prepared in our suit and wedding kimono/hakama respectively. Tsuna had gotten there much earlier for make-up and hair styling, although she had barely gotten any sleep the night previously. While the guest were getting reading downstairs in the lobby, we had our official wedding photos taken in the photo studio. They came out nicely, but Les was taking some photos at the time and I prefer his, to be honest. I'll be putting some up on the blog after this post.

The time came for Tsuna and I to make our grand entrance at the shrine. The guests were lined up long both sides, most of them taking photos. By the end of the day, I was going to get really, really sick of photography in general, but we'll get to that later. Tsuna and I entered the shrine first and took our seats in the middle. As everyone else filed in behind us, I started to sweat profusely. The pre-marriage jitters had finally begun, but by then it was too late to spray on an extra layer of deodorant.

The ceremony involved a lot of bowing, and each time I leaned forward I felt pretty faint and dehydrated. We had practiced the wedding ceremony just the day previously, so I knew what to expect. What I hadn't anticipated was that my phone can turn itself on if an alarm is active, which is what it did when we were offering fern leaves at the altar. I had left my phone (which I had turned off) with Les, but he didn't know it was mine that was ringing. Luckily, that was the biggest Snafu that occurred during the ceremony. The rings were exchanged, the sake was drunk and we were finally married. However,when the ceremony was over I felt pretty dehydrated and was surprised there wasn't a small puddle of sweat at my feet. :-)

After a brief respite, the wedding reception began. We had raided both of our music collections for the wedding soundtrack, but I figured that techno or Dragonforce would not be appropriate for the occasion. This limited my possible songlist from 2000 songs down to... well, two. I had bought a lot of songs on iTunes before the wedding, and was able to get some crypto-geek classics into the final soundtrack, such as "Still Alive" from Portal and lots of the End of Evangelion soundtrack.

The speeches went well, and my mate Susumu did a superb job of translating everything from Japanese into English and vice-versa. On my side, my best man Les, my kendo teacher and friend Mr Ishigawa and my father gave a speech. On Tsuna's side, her father, her aunt and two of her friends gave speeches too. Tsuna's aunt sang some songs for the wedding and Mr Ishigawa performed a Japanese sword dance. Tsuna's college friend Miki served as the bilingual MC, and did a very hard job well. Finally, my Japanese teacher Tomo took care of translating things for my parents.

We put a lot of effort into choosing the menu for the wedding, but we didn't have a chance to eat much of it. We spent most of our time talking to guests rather than enjoying the food or drinking. My advice for all those who are yet to get married- bring doggie bags to your wedding :-)

The reception seemed a lot quicker than the ceremony, although it was actually two hours longer. When the time came to leave, we waited out the front and handed out small gifts to all the guests (most of whom had given us some pocket money earlier). This is when we were swamped by photographers. Tsuna and I were stuck in place for a long time as flash after flash went off. By the end, my mouth was physically hurting from all the smiling. If you look at some of the later photos, no matter how happy I looked, I was dreaming of murdering the CEO of Canon, Olympus and Pentax.

All that was two months ago. Tsuna and I are now living together in Toyota, and I have to say that we're enjoying married life a lot more than the time we were dating or engaged ^_^

-Blake

W Day

Well, I'm off to bed. Tomorrow is the big day. My fingers are crossed that everything will come together at the ceremony and the reception.

In my next post I'll either be married or in exile in Pakistan :p

-B

Husband and Wife Rocks

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Originally uploaded by OmegaBlake.

I'm quite happy how this one turned out. The rocks are known as the "Husband and Wife" rocks because they are so close together and the smaller one seems to lean towards the bigger one. They are tied together with a really thick Shinto cord, and there is a little Torri gate on the top of the big one

A very cold day in Futami, Mie Prefecture

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Originally uploaded by OmegaBlake.

When the clouds cleared, we could actually see Mt Fuji in-between the rocks. Swear to Cthulhu!

Trees by the river in Ise Jingu, Mie Prefecture

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Originally uploaded by OmegaBlake.

I took this in last November when Tsuna and I took a day trip to Mie. I'll be uploading the prettier ones every time I'm online

Hamburg Steak Sushi!

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Originally uploaded by OmegaBlake.

I had six of them. It was 1000 Yen well spent

日本語 Get!

Well, I passed the Japanese 4th Level exam that I took last year with a score of 300 out of 400. As I wrote on Facebook, I passed through a combination of hard work, diligence and a computer error. Go ブレイク！

According to the notice I got, I have

"mastered the basic elements of grammar, knows around 100 Kanji and 800 words, and has the ability to engage in simple conversation and to read and write short, simple sentences. This level is normally reached after studying Japanese for around 150 hours and after completion of the first half of an elementary course"

So in other words, I can hold a conversation with a two year old. Which is good, because there are some smart, interesting two year olds in this country :P