Travels in Japan - Takayama and Shirakawago

Sometimes when you travel the expectation exceeds the reality of the situation. This is rare for me, especially when it comes to Japan, but when my family traveled there, we had an expectation to see the mountain hamlet of Shirakawago. The plan was to stay in neighboring Takayama, known for its old townscape with beautiful and quaint houses that feel like something out of the more ancient times. We would then go to the hamlet, which in itself has a lovely old feel with grass roofed houses (known as Gassho for the shape of hands in prayer). Unfortunetly for us we stayed at a not so nice hotel in Takayama and I think that colored the entire feeling of the one night stay. I won't beligure the Hotel experience other than to say it was a bad chance, and I think if we stayed at another place both my parents and I would have had a higher opinion. We also went in spring and there was still the sort of "Ugly Duckling" feeling to Shirakawgo, with more mud and semi-melted snow than the picturesque village scene we hoped for. Plus Shirakawago is a tourist destination, so it has little tourist shops here and there. It gives one an understanding that though this is a working village, and though it is beautiful, it does rely heavilly on tourists, and its not just a forgotten place that you stumble upon. I did like Takayama, and I would go back there and to Shirakawago in the fall or later spring to get a better sense, and stay at a better hotel for a better experience. My memories of Takayama are of streets with lovely wooden houses. Warm light touched from the glass or paper windows and lanterns in the morning as passed by on an early walk. The local museum had some very beautiful models of shrines we would see in Nikko, and some floats from their local festival. We also saw Mount Fuji on the train ride to Nikko, which was a highlight. Alas, the rest of this brief stint sort of fades into memory looking back. I can look through the pictures and think about what could be, but that's not what was. But that happens sometime. On our first trip our bad experience was a single restaurant outside Fushimi Inari, so this was our little brief one here. We would more than make up for it in Nikko.

Brief Glimpse at Fuji

Takayama Town Center

One of the old shops of Takayama

A carving/motif of a dragon at a local shrine

Festival Floats at the museum

Model of Toshogu Shrine in Nikko

Gassho Grass Roofed Farm Houses

Remnants of Winter

Fun little sign in Takayama

My family and I overlooking Shirakawago

I caught a brief ceremony at the local Inari Shrine.

9/11/2021

\    Sometimes emotions run raw when we think back to events in our life.  There are seminal moments that mark a generation that future generations might not be able to comprehend.  For my grandparents, Pearl Harbor was such an event, but for me Pearl Harbor was just history.  I knew about it, I respected the history I was told and the outcome of the attack on the United States at that time.   Growing up I never thought I would see such an event in my own lifetime.  

Trouble in paradise

 

It seems like every day I wake up to some terrible news filtering in from the world.  Cable networks are full of it, a constant and consistent drum beat of terrible events and terrible situations near and far.  It's gotten to the point that I stop listening to the news because I either hear diatribes or dire news.   But all is certainly not lost, at least, that is the hope.

I am reminded of a visit to Lake Tahoe about Thanksgiving last year.  At the time I was grappling with some issues related to my job.  Covid was in full swing and years of lack of movement or promotion had piled one atop another like leaden blankets that threatened to suffocate me.  The CO19 wasn't helping anything, and the same rote of cleaning rooms that were already clean was driving me nuts, so my family and I absconded to Tahoe as we often do.

The city we stay in was virtually empty, which was nice, and the weather was warmer than I was hoping (I wanted to see some snow and fall colors but this is California.)   I decided to take a walk along the south shore and came upon the above sign.   It was on the side of the Casino on a marquee and proudly proclaimed "Welcome back to paradise."     The s in paradise had gone kilter.  

I remember considering how nice the weather was, how lucky I was to be there even considering everything going on, "What a perfect analogy for how I feel.  Trouble in paradise."  It made me laugh and I took the picture because how could I not?   It was just one of those funny little lifetime situations that's quirky enough to snap you out of your funk, while still maintaining the breadth of the situation.  

So today, as I awake at 4 AM with troubled thoughts swirling in from a nighttime of bad news, I think of this sign and hope that maybe today will be better.

Why I Miss Google +

 There was a time I looked forward to blogging, to getting my thoughts and ideas out there and seeing the interactions with people.  I looked forward to the chance to share and read what others shared.   That was not so long ago, on Google Plus.    

I've shared my thoughts on Google and its problems before.  Other than its troubling political leanings (at least in my opinion) Google made a very curious decision to cancel its sharing platform.   Google Plus was a great way to find communities, but now that's long gone, and I find it much harder to find equal thoughts and footing.  I have ebbed onto other things, such as MeWe, and stayed away from certain things such as Tumblr simply because of its reputation.     Facebook gets hacked every other day with no consequence.  The list of viable alternatives is very limited.

For me writing is as much about the anticipation of reaction as much as the action of writing itself.  I can spin a world of ruin or creation with just a few lines.   Google caused other problems in the past too, nixing a blog of mine with a false flag of spam because of a mistake and of course, Google had no way to contact and appeal my concern.   Sound's a lot like what I hear about youtube ... oh wait, its owned by the same company.

A friend of mine called this new era the start of the true Corporate overculture.  You can see this sort of idea in Blade Runner's envisioned future with huge and faceless corporations overseeing the consumer masses even as they grow more poor and desperate.   Meanwhile, the overlords get richer and more disassociated from humanity.   Of course, I also realize the irony of this statement and making it on a Google Platform Blog.   

I realize I use Google pathways to search, and Google email for work and other things.   There's a simplicity in the easiest and largest way to do a thing.   I can decry what they've done wrong, and yet I can also long for one thing they got right.   For a chance to reach out, have a community, a chance to interact, react and grow.   Maybe something will develop in the future, improving my opinion again.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Google%2B_logo.svg/250px-Google%2B_logo.svg.png

Misadventures in Scouting - A Stone's Throw

When your in Boy Scouts you get to go to a lot of remarkable places if your lucky.  I've been up and down the California Coast, from Death Valley to Alcatraz, from my own backyard in summer to the coldest winter wonderlands.  One of the highlights of most Boy Scout retinues is the summer trip where the troop or group will gather together the funds to go to a summer camp.   There are several great camps in California, and many not so great ones.  I have several stories from a not so great one, but today's story takes place at a great one, in fact one of the most famous in California.

Situated several miles off the Southern California Coast, Catalina is one of the most famous islands of what is called Channel Islands National Park.  It was a haven of the rich and wealthy in the boom years of Hollywood and today its an escape from the horizontal sprawl and concrete plain that is Los Angeles.   To get there is a rather bumpy boat ride, a dire prospect for someone so prone to sea-sickness as I am.  Dramamine is a must, but once you arrive on Catalina you find harborage in Avalon, the largest city (and the only one) on the island.  

Our destination was Emerald Bay, a Boy Scout Camp famous in California for its proximity to the ocean and a distinctly nautical (pirate) theme.   This is not to say you can expect Captain Hook here, but the camp is right on the ocean with its own beach along with hiking trails along bluffs overlooking the pacific ocean.  With good food, great activities and a chance to mingle with fellow scouts, its a fantastic camp, probably the second best camp I ever went to.   

One of the highlights is a chance to camp overnight on a beach with barbecue and stories   Its quite the thing because you hike to this secluded bay which is covered in these pebbles and spend all day playing around in the ocean.  By the time night comes, you don't even notice the billions of rocks that become a warm wonderful cradle for you as you fall asleep.  

Of course, with rocks comes the inevitable urge to throw rocks into the ocean which is where our story comes from.   For the sake of humor, we will call our subject Mark Heffburg.  Mark was an interesting guy, one whom I will tell another story of in the future.   He was not possessed of the greatest humor, though his Dad was one of our scoutmasters growing up and had a great one.  He was a bit uptight, but he had interesting viewpoints which cut through our childish fun.

There I was, tossing stones into the oceans and Mark decided to chime in with the way Mark always did by saying, "Well gee that rock spent a million years getting up here, now its back where it started."

At the time I remember thinking, "Seriously?" but honestly he was right.  Those stones I was throwing had taken who knows how long to reach there and here I was tossing them right back into the ocean without a care in the world.   Now and forever when I see stones on the beach, or someone throwing stones I think of Mark's comment at Emerald Bay.   Perhaps in another million years someone will pick up the same stone and throw it right back.

(Image Courtesy of Shutterstock: https://ak.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/21662668/thumb/1.jpg)

The New Prohibition

 

Author's Note:  The following is a work of fiction and not meant to represent anyone person or thing.  It is meant to spit in the eye of 2020.

_________________________________________________________________________________

It was a day just like any other in America, 2021.   I had my usual proclivities; yoga at home, making sure my kids Zoom wasn't frozen and they weren't screwing around, and staying at least 20 feet away from Karen who goes around without her mask as she walks her annoying little dog.   The pantry was full of at least fifteen years worth of toilet paper that I got back in '20 when the big one hit Costco.  I still remember making the run, five miles uphill with a shopping cart in both directions, the TP piled so high you'd think it reach the stratosphere.  Those were the dark days.    Things weren't much better now.   

Every time someone slightly coughs you'd better expect everyone to duck and cover, tuck their head between their legs so far you'd think they were kissing their own butt goodbye.  No shave September was a bust, and if I was lucky a dame would have an extra pack of N95's from China in my favorite colors down at the hardware store in six months.  It's gotten to the point I don't remember my own wife's face anymore, but don't tell her I said that.

Which brings me here today, this dark alleyway on the wrong side of town.   See, there's one major thing I need, something that'll get me and everyone else involved in trouble if the Feds catch on.  Since the plague, it's gotten rarer and rarer, more precious than gold.   That's why I'm here, behind the pet store with the rest of the garbage.

A steel door with a slit set into the dirty brick greets me.   The instructions were clear and I knock three times.  The slit opens and a wrinkled set of eyes greets me.  "Yeah waddya want?"  The woman's voice is rough, probably tinged from long hours trying to make end's meet. 

"I'm here for the stuff."  I hiss.   "Jimmy Two-times sent me."

"Jimmy Two-times?   That slacker no good grifter owes me for Tuesday."  She scoffs.  "Ya got the stuff?"

"I do," I say lifting up a recycled paper grocery bag I stole from the store.   Time was we had to pay ten cents for these things here in California.  Now everyone's too afraid of dying to notice or care about a stupid bag.  

"The good stuff," I continue, bringing out a bottle of clear liquid.  "Pure 99.9 percent antibacterial with aloe."

"Yeah, I got fourty of those,"  She says.  "What else?"

"I got an extra sleeve or two of toilet pa-" 

She cuts me off mid word, "Kid I got enough toilet paper to build the pyramids."   

I don't say anything.   "Well, I pay by card not cash.  But if your hard up, I got some dimes and-"

Those dark, narrow eyes widen.  Dimes are almost extinct now after all.   "Dimes?   I could use em.   Last week customer came in, didn't have a card, had to give him a hundred pennies."    There's a sound of a few dozen bolts, a latch, a heavy metal and metal sound.  A small Japanese lady with pink house slippers and her hair in curlers stands there about waist height to me.  

"Come in quickly.   Were you followed?"

"No, I made sure."    Its a back room of the groomers, lots of dog treats in boxes where they've been since March of 20 when the end came.   There wasn't any rapture, and the four horsemen might have been preferable to Groundhog day.

"This way,"  She says, going over to a door.   She knocks twice.   A knock comes back and the door opens.   A round African American woman with cokebottle glasses greets me. 

There's tables set up where the groomers used to be, but what's different from grooming a dog and a person in this day and age?   The curtains are drawn and everything's dark enough you'd think a roadflare would be lost.   Everything's perfectly clean though, neatly arranged, waiting for the dogs and owners to come back in.   The few customers inside are all at least 6 feet apart, masked.  The proprietors are all masked.   Not a month ago, this was fine, they were following procedure set out by our Dear Leaders.  The world was burning down, but this was fine.   

"Take a seat,"   she says.  I notice her nametag reads "Damia."  

"Thanks for letting me in Damia."  I say.

"Yeah, yeah no problem.  Now what's it going to be?  A little off the top or take it all?"

"Shear it, give me the New Zealand special."    I say.  She nods and gets to work, carefully lifting my mask.

"Got to hand it to you, glad to see that someone can still do this, pretty hard when the Feds keep moving the goal posts."   I start.   Then seeing her stare at me down through her glasses, I realize I'm supposed to be quiet now, hold my breath.  Don't want the creeping crud to possibly escape if I maybe, possibly have it.    I grumble to myself.  My last four tests all came back negative.   It's gotten to the point you can shove a palm tree up my nose and it might still tickle though.

Before long, the floor's littered so much of my brown hair you'd think I was a yeti. I feel about 20 pounds lighter.  At least now I can see without binoculars perched on my nose to get around my own dreads.  

"That'll be fourty-thirty nine,"  Damia says without skipping a beat.  I've gotten used to such prices to get a spot for a haircut.  I call it this whole ordeal French Laundry system back home, but I don't dare to make that joke here.   It's still too soon.

I nod and reach into one pocket to pull out my gloves, slipping them on.  Then into another to get the tongs I always use, gingerly fishing out my card from the wallet.   Damia takes it with the trepidation of someone trying to handle red-hot uranium.   Soon enough deed's done.  There's no need for a receipt, that's just another risk.  

"If someone asks, you tell 'em that we're planning to open 2025."   The owner tells me as she shows me the back door.   I nod, glad at least there wasn't a raid.   Last week I heard the bar down the street got fined fourteen-thousand dollars for letting a guy inside to check for termites.   They offered him a bottle of water and that was their first and last mistake.

As I head out the alley, mask on and hoodie up, no one will hopefully recognize me.  I slip in, six feet apart from the next person in line at Trader Joes down the street to wait and buy a barrel of milk for sixty bucks.

Delving Dungeons (and Dragons)

"The tattered stones are a patchwork pattern beneath your feet as you slowly creep along the narrow hall.  Mildew stings the nose, the only sound the errant and occasional drip of water from the cracked ceiling above.   Just ahead, the hallway splits into a three way path.  To the north you hear soft, moaning groans and the shuffling of slow, plodding feet.   To the west, a shimmering portal glows, its radiance offset by images of what seems to be a floating city.   To the East you see nothing but inky darkness, a yawning emptiness of promise and peril in equal potential.    What do you do?"

To the uninitiated, the above may be the premise of a choose your own adventure, but it is my very basic attempt as a description of a character exploring a space in the game of Dungeons and Dragons.  Created in the 1970's by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, among others, D&D has evolved over the many decades from a niche "Geek" and "Nerd" hobby into something of a cultural phenomenon.

To describe D&D, it is one part Lord of the Rings, one part theater play, one part math and statistics and one part patience.  You as the player create a character from a vast array of races, classes, backgrounds, ideals, flaws, personality traits and bonds.  This character is formed from your own imagination, but their attributes and everything they do are determined by rolling various sided dice to determine how well you succeed or how spectacularly you fail.

You  as a character do not just stride up to someone to smooze your way through the door, you do so and then roll to persuade, deceptive or something similar.  Depending how you roll, maybe that doorman lets you through, maybe they stop you cold and punch you in the gut, or maybe they lift their brows and say "come up and see me sometime" because you were so unbelievably charming.

At the other end of this game is the person known as the Dungeon Master.   The DM as they are often called is part god part referee.  They play all the non player characters, the monsters, they create the dungeons and they stipulate rules and act as arbitrator for things that happen.   The DM is both best friend and mortal enemy all rolled into one.

If we want to use the Lord of the Rings as an example, the riddling with Gollum would be a set of rolls to determine the success or failure of riddles, but the true beauty would be the interaction between the player of Bilbo and the DM as Gollum creating the riddles themselves.  It's imagination meets statistical probability and a great deal of luck, and its glorious to watch.

Back in the day, groups of people would gather around a table with dice and sheets of stats and roleplay characters they would create in worlds of fantasy, science fiction and perhaps more than a little pop culture reference thrown in for good measure.   Nowadays you can go online and see shows like Critical Role which have exploded with popularity and become entities unto their own, inspiring new content for the game based on the adventures of a group of voice actors in D&D.

For me, the adventure began almost 13 years ago working nights in my job.  Back then D&D was still very niche, but I had a group of people I enjoyed watching on Youtube, and I would download podcasts to keep my mind occupied with my work.  One of the things that I discovered in this time was their D&D game which was one of the most crazy, off the cuff but remarkable stories I listened to.  It was silly most times, but there were serious beats of a fantastic story just as epic as anything Tolkien could write.  I sometimes joke that the only way I kept sane for so long was because of their insanity.

I became fascinated, looking up other Youtubers about Dungeons and Dragons stories, rules, settings etc.   Over time the want and need to play practical D&D grew in me like dragon fire until I could contain it no longer.   I had no practical experience in the game but I tried to go to a local game store to inquire a few times.  Unfortunately the in person experience wasn't quite what I wanted, and the store was not a fit for my style, so I went back and tried to find other means to play the game.  To that end I found a site called Roll20.

Roll20 is a "virtual" tabletop endorsed by the creators of D&D where one can easily play any tabletop games with people all over the world at any time.  It's really a remarkable system and I have had the incredible luck to find a fantastic group to start learning the game.  Now, almost two years later I am still very much a novice, but I've found I feel far more confident and creative as a player of the practical game.

Our adventure, known as "Of Long Lost Heroes" takes place on the Sword Coast of Faerun, a popular D&D adventure setting.  I play as a bard, which is a very social class that acts as a supporter, slinging spells that affect enemy creatures, heal my allies, and inspire them through story and song.   Of course, I am a sucker for strange things, and being the avid bird lover, I honed in on an unusual D&D race known as the Aarakocra.

The Aarakocra are bird people from another plane of existence, and while not a powerful race graced with fantastic stats or awesome magic, they can fly.   The thought of me as this bird, flying through the air and singing inspirations or flinging awesome spells from afar was awesome enough in my book. Thus, "Cyrano Starshadow" was born, or "Jay" in short since I based him off a bluejay that visits my garden. 

Cyrano is not like other Aarakocra, he was raised by elves who found his egg in the wilds and became inspired to seek his own destiny after hearing tales of great adventure.   Thus he traveled to Waterdeep, an enormous city on the Sword Coast and became a part of the Bard's College of New Olamn.  Cyrano would have been content to just be "that blue jay" at the college, if not for a strange invitation inviting him to join a guild called "Sword's Edge."

Cyrano is joined by a vast cast of nonplayer characters, allies and enemies played by our DM, Justin Acala, who writes science fiction/fantasy.   Then we have the other players:

 

• DC, who plays Nazir, our stalwart Paladin of Joy, a ladies and gent's man who rides a horse that is literally made of the night sky.
• Lewis, who plays Naivara, a snarky and often sardonic sorceress of the elemental arts, who seems to have a habit of running into assassins that want to kill her.
• Jadon, who plays Korax, a great beast of a man based on Maori warriors, the last of his people in another plane and who wears a mask to conceal his face.
• Kristi, our archer of keen eye.  Her character Selitae is quiet and reserved, but she yearns to break free of that and come into her own.
• Cyrano (Myself), an Aarakocra Bard initially only yearned to entertain others and explore, but he has found himself as a secret James Bond style agent with an Ancient Green Dragon vying for a particular musical instrument he now holds.

Over the course of many sessions we have all changed a great deal, learned a lot about each other's dreams and fears, and we've become pretty good friends in and out of character.  Sometimes we clash just as friends do, and we've seen other players come and go.  Ultimately though, this is our story, and we all look forward to playing each week.

My part in all this?  Well I am the resident Bard, so being the writer struggling a bit with proverbial block, I have taken talon to paper as the group's storyteller.  Cyrano has detailed his adventures in a set of journals that has over a thousand views on our game forums.  I don't know all of who is reading these journals, letters home as I have written them, but its fun to look back and see the various pitfalls and triumphs we all had.  I've had to wrestle with moral quandries, sieges of fortifications, eyeballs that shoot death, and a vast underground dungeon built by a crazy mage just for the amusement of seeing people get lost in it.

We are closing in on the last parts of the game, and while our adventure might be coming to a close, it is my hope that we will continue to play together.   D&D groups can be flippant and fluid, but a good group like this hopefully can find other adventures.  Until then, there are dungeons to delve, dragons to slay and Cyrano's story to unfold.   There are many questions he still seeks answers to, and much that even the freedom of flight cannot help him to escape.

How will his story end?  Only the dice, our DM and a bit of luck will know for certain.   Until then, dear traveler, safe travails.  And should you find yourself in Waterdeep, seek out the Songbird of Sword's Edge.  Who knows.  Perhaps we can share a meal and song before plunging into the world together as allies.

(If you would like to see Cyrano's Journals you can click either of the above links in this post or look here:  https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6689112/the-letters-of-cyrano-starshadow)

(Image Courtesy of:  https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2017/08/31/04/01/d20-2699387_960_720.png)