The city I live in, with a population of just over 200,000, is too big for my tastes, let alone a mega-city like Tokyo, though I imagine there’s a plethora of restaurants I wouldn’t mind visiting.
DavidJuly 11, 2021, 8:32 AM
I very much hold with Thomas Jefferson, who said “When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe”
Kerin Beer sucks, Saki is nasty, hiking up Mt Fugi was kinda cool, twice. 1976 the dollar was crap.
Loved the Japanese people, loved how-clean the sidewalks the streets were. 19/20 yr old sailor, awaiting flight to the USS Coral Sea. Even then I really really enjoyed new cultures, new ways, and foods.
Took a few days to climatize to the Asian heat. Loved the sudden afternoon storms quickly learned they nylon shorts and silk Hawaiian shirts were perfect storm weather apparel, dried off quickly.
Tokyo on a USO sponsored tour, for a weekend. Spent the entire time wandering alleyways, or their equivalent. Staying away from the tourist traps, we met folks our age wishing to learn English we hung out with them, those folks took us to places, most Americans hadn’t seen.
The traditional Japanese music is amazing. Still have several Cassette tapes, “ bad shape” but later replaced with CD’s many years later.
Remember thinking can these really be those brutal people my grandfather and uncles fought in WWII.
Finally caught a C-1 Cod out to the carrier, after many stops, caught the boat just before our Australia port of call. Another amazing adventure.
VI
Casey KlahnJuly 11, 2021, 9:32 AM
My sort of storied life includes a summer in Japan. Tokyo was just a stop-over.
The Japanese love/hate Americans. That needs no explanation.
Didn’t we firebomb the livingfuk out of Tokyo? Look at it now!
My dad, having escaped death time after time fighting the Germans, in 1945, skipped the points line to come back to the states and train to invade Japan from the sea. That would’ve been the shitshow of all shitshows. As it was, he pulled into NYC on the troopship, knowing that he’d dodged that large bullet because Japan had surrendered before he made port.
enn essJuly 11, 2021, 9:46 AM
Never setting foot on anything but asphalt and concrete, no trees, no nature unless it’s fabricated, every environment controlled, all your moves and actions dictated by others. All your “needs” having to be supplied and relied upon by outside supply lines. Having top spend your not working off hours living like a rat in a tiny cubicle of an apartment. You are simply going through life to support a machine. NO THANKS.
I hate going to town and the one nearest me is under 1000, and it’s too damn big. It’s especially miserable during summer when the tourist (terrorists) are in season. I have nothing against people, just haven’t found much use for the majority of em.
The older I get the more I like my dog – and he’s dead.
I’m so old I can remember, way back in the day when common folks were allowed to travel, making eight or ten trips to Japan.
Tokyo was fun for short visits, lots of back alleys to explore, Akihabara, etc., but getting out in the countryside, up in the mountains was pure delight.
gwbnycJuly 11, 2021, 10:54 AM
“and there’s Tokyo”
…poof
AlfromChgoJuly 11, 2021, 11:21 AM
Trying to find Base Camp Fujl on the photo. 1964 360 yen to the dollar and pay in MPC. Fine time to be a 20 year old.
ZaphodJuly 11, 2021, 5:57 PM
It’s a big old joint for sure. Best to think of it as made up of a number of cities/wards/major station junctions. You get to know your local area and one or two other places. Could live somewhere like Shimo-Kitazawa or Azabu-Juban and feel pretty much comfortable in a village/town environment and not feel the huge metropolis pressing in upon you. The weirdest thing is that I had a subway map of Tokyo in my head and would pop up here and there gopher-like — sometimes to be be surprised by how close how far apart two surface locations might be.
But to live out in the sprawl of Chiba or Saitama Prefectures and have to commute all the way into Tokyo to work every day would be hell.
Steve in PAJuly 12, 2021, 3:44 AM
Is this posted in answer to your perennial question, “Nuked too much or not enough?”
waitingForTheStormJuly 12, 2021, 5:40 AM
We had several exchange students from Japan.
Anna was from Tokyo. She came to us in late November after having been bounced around several households because she was too Japanese and was having trouble adjusting. We lived in a small rural community. One evening she came in and asked me to accompany her back outside. She looked up and asked, “What is that?” Meaning, of course, the stars in the sky. Being in Tokyo, she had never seen the relatively dark night sky. She was amazed. We spent several weeks walking on the evenings when the weather was not rain. She stayed with us thru late May when she left early dues to a death in the family. She was an odd young lady.
We hosted 8 or 9 Japanese students over the years. Hosting is an eye opening experience; and, the Japanese students prompted us to question so much about the cultural norms that move us through society.
gwbnycJuly 12, 2021, 6:08 AM
AlfromChgo:
-back in those days it was typical for a father/grandfather/uncle/cousin to be mailed the black silk smoking jacket with a dragon embroidered on the back from a corresponding son/grandson/nephew/cousin “kid in the service”.
I’d kill for another of those silk smoking jackets!, don’t smoke so guess I can’t have one.
Above regarding exchange students, we hosted a church exchange, had a student stay for a month, she spoke not one word of English. Interesting exchanges. Was amazed at just how quickly our children learned to effectively communicate, a sort of pig Latin, a lot of acting out what was wanted/ needed.
Living in Tulelake Ca, we debated taking Her to the Tulelake Japanese internment camps. We finally did, and she lit up, spent days wandering. When I took her to the camps old dump, she spent a day just digging thru piles of discarded cans, other items discarded. She collected several treasures cleaned them packed them,, mailed them home.
Her last week we went camping in the high lake wilderness area. Took a chance and stopped at the site of a Japanese ballon bomb, which killed several locals a youth church group out of Bly Oregon we’re on a Sunday outing when they came upon the deflated ballon.
The group approached the ballon and the explosives blew, killing most of the group. That was 44/45 the Japanese we’re attempting to start fires in the forests on the PNW, to draw men and supplies away from the war effort.
Our guest must have taken twenty rolls worth of pictures-prayed, cried prayed some more and cried. We’ve lost touch with her, in fact me nor my wife remember her name. She did have an impact on our worldly views. I’d spent a fair amount of time in Japan prior, already had embraced the people, their culture. My wife and children still speak of the experience. Believe her being her was a great influence on our kids, more a great adventure.
That was 34 years ago. We still visit the memorial site yearly, when we enter the monument, I always experience a peaceful almost zen like inner peace. Like the spirits are greeting us. My daughter just walked in, the girls name was Hisako.
Apologies, as I age, I find I write way to much, it’s almost as if I’m rekindling myself with my youth, trying to refresh these wonderful memories, preserve them for the next thirty year stint.
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
![Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/ginsbergnirvana-150x150.jpg "Allen Ginsberg: The Interview, <strong> ➡ 1972 ⬅ </strong> [Republished by unpopular demand]")
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Comments on this entry are closed.
The city I live in, with a population of just over 200,000, is too big for my tastes, let alone a mega-city like Tokyo, though I imagine there’s a plethora of restaurants I wouldn’t mind visiting.
I very much hold with Thomas Jefferson, who said “When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe”
Kerin Beer sucks, Saki is nasty, hiking up Mt Fugi was kinda cool, twice. 1976 the dollar was crap.
Loved the Japanese people, loved how-clean the sidewalks the streets were. 19/20 yr old sailor, awaiting flight to the USS Coral Sea. Even then I really really enjoyed new cultures, new ways, and foods.
Took a few days to climatize to the Asian heat. Loved the sudden afternoon storms quickly learned they nylon shorts and silk Hawaiian shirts were perfect storm weather apparel, dried off quickly.
Tokyo on a USO sponsored tour, for a weekend. Spent the entire time wandering alleyways, or their equivalent. Staying away from the tourist traps, we met folks our age wishing to learn English we hung out with them, those folks took us to places, most Americans hadn’t seen.
The traditional Japanese music is amazing. Still have several Cassette tapes, “ bad shape” but later replaced with CD’s many years later.
Remember thinking can these really be those brutal people my grandfather and uncles fought in WWII.
Finally caught a C-1 Cod out to the carrier, after many stops, caught the boat just before our Australia port of call. Another amazing adventure.
VI
My sort of storied life includes a summer in Japan. Tokyo was just a stop-over.
The Japanese love/hate Americans. That needs no explanation.
Didn’t we firebomb the livingfuk out of Tokyo? Look at it now!
My dad, having escaped death time after time fighting the Germans, in 1945, skipped the points line to come back to the states and train to invade Japan from the sea. That would’ve been the shitshow of all shitshows. As it was, he pulled into NYC on the troopship, knowing that he’d dodged that large bullet because Japan had surrendered before he made port.
Never setting foot on anything but asphalt and concrete, no trees, no nature unless it’s fabricated, every environment controlled, all your moves and actions dictated by others. All your “needs” having to be supplied and relied upon by outside supply lines. Having top spend your not working off hours living like a rat in a tiny cubicle of an apartment. You are simply going through life to support a machine. NO THANKS.
I hate going to town and the one nearest me is under 1000, and it’s too damn big. It’s especially miserable during summer when the tourist (terrorists) are in season. I have nothing against people, just haven’t found much use for the majority of em.
The older I get the more I like my dog – and he’s dead.
I’m so old I can remember, way back in the day when common folks were allowed to travel, making eight or ten trips to Japan.
Tokyo was fun for short visits, lots of back alleys to explore, Akihabara, etc., but getting out in the countryside, up in the mountains was pure delight.
“and there’s Tokyo”
…poof
Trying to find Base Camp Fujl on the photo. 1964 360 yen to the dollar and pay in MPC. Fine time to be a 20 year old.
It’s a big old joint for sure. Best to think of it as made up of a number of cities/wards/major station junctions. You get to know your local area and one or two other places. Could live somewhere like Shimo-Kitazawa or Azabu-Juban and feel pretty much comfortable in a village/town environment and not feel the huge metropolis pressing in upon you. The weirdest thing is that I had a subway map of Tokyo in my head and would pop up here and there gopher-like — sometimes to be be surprised by how close how far apart two surface locations might be.
But to live out in the sprawl of Chiba or Saitama Prefectures and have to commute all the way into Tokyo to work every day would be hell.
Is this posted in answer to your perennial question, “Nuked too much or not enough?”
We had several exchange students from Japan.
Anna was from Tokyo. She came to us in late November after having been bounced around several households because she was too Japanese and was having trouble adjusting. We lived in a small rural community. One evening she came in and asked me to accompany her back outside. She looked up and asked, “What is that?” Meaning, of course, the stars in the sky. Being in Tokyo, she had never seen the relatively dark night sky. She was amazed. We spent several weeks walking on the evenings when the weather was not rain. She stayed with us thru late May when she left early dues to a death in the family. She was an odd young lady.
We hosted 8 or 9 Japanese students over the years. Hosting is an eye opening experience; and, the Japanese students prompted us to question so much about the cultural norms that move us through society.
AlfromChgo:
-back in those days it was typical for a father/grandfather/uncle/cousin to be mailed the black silk smoking jacket with a dragon embroidered on the back from a corresponding son/grandson/nephew/cousin “kid in the service”.
I’d kill for another of those silk smoking jackets!, don’t smoke so guess I can’t have one.
Above regarding exchange students, we hosted a church exchange, had a student stay for a month, she spoke not one word of English. Interesting exchanges. Was amazed at just how quickly our children learned to effectively communicate, a sort of pig Latin, a lot of acting out what was wanted/ needed.
Living in Tulelake Ca, we debated taking Her to the Tulelake Japanese internment camps. We finally did, and she lit up, spent days wandering. When I took her to the camps old dump, she spent a day just digging thru piles of discarded cans, other items discarded. She collected several treasures cleaned them packed them,, mailed them home.
Her last week we went camping in the high lake wilderness area. Took a chance and stopped at the site of a Japanese ballon bomb, which killed several locals a youth church group out of Bly Oregon we’re on a Sunday outing when they came upon the deflated ballon.
The group approached the ballon and the explosives blew, killing most of the group. That was 44/45 the Japanese we’re attempting to start fires in the forests on the PNW, to draw men and supplies away from the war effort.
Our guest must have taken twenty rolls worth of pictures-prayed, cried prayed some more and cried. We’ve lost touch with her, in fact me nor my wife remember her name. She did have an impact on our worldly views. I’d spent a fair amount of time in Japan prior, already had embraced the people, their culture. My wife and children still speak of the experience. Believe her being her was a great influence on our kids, more a great adventure.
That was 34 years ago. We still visit the memorial site yearly, when we enter the monument, I always experience a peaceful almost zen like inner peace. Like the spirits are greeting us. My daughter just walked in, the girls name was Hisako.
Apologies, as I age, I find I write way to much, it’s almost as if I’m rekindling myself with my youth, trying to refresh these wonderful memories, preserve them for the next thirty year stint.
VI
Dang! That will take at least two nukes.