I Like Pigeons Because Nobody Else Does

Good news – Gene has accepted a position with Lancaster Radiology in Lancaster PA, our hometown. We never figured we’d move back there – it’s seriously conservative which is at odds with a lot of what I enjoy and think, but you can find something shitty about anywhere you go and the benefits certainly outweigh any detractors. I simply don’t have the desire or wherewithall to start over, yet again, in a new locale. The luster of novel living situations has worn off and it will be a welcome change to live in a community that’s already rife with friends and family.  He will start work around July 1st, but we’re planning on skipping out of San Diego near the beginning of June and then possibly squeezing in a trip to Europe before he starts.

We had a blast in Yosemite…but the dogs didn’t. We’ll never take them on vacation again. Sinbad can’t stand any deviation from his usual routine and when Little Buddy wasn’t glued to the gas stove, he was shivering. Gene described it best when he said that they looked like we were holding them hostage – they sat with ears pinned, looking plaintive and worried for 4 days. The Little Buddy puked in the car as we wound our way down out of the Sierra Nevada Range.

But we humans had a great time. Yosemite is one of those places that is not able to be described verbally – you just have to see it for yourself in order to understand just how magnificent it really is. I had grandiose visions of capturing that magnificence with shots rivalling those of Ansel Adams. We bought a new wide-angle lens specifically for this trip and was especially anxious to break it in in Yosemite. I played with it around the house for a few days and arrogantly supposed I had it figured out, but nothing could’ve been further from the truth. My pictures suck. All of them. I’ve been so focused on up-close and macro work the last few years that I didn’t realize that landscape photography is a whole new world that is going to require remedial training.

We stayed in a cabin about 2 miles from the park’s west entrance and spent our days hiking the park’s various trails and sitting on the cabin’s porch watching the birds and relaxing. It was Shangri-la. No phone, no traffic, no sirens, no diesel smoke wafting through the kitchen door, no black soot from overhead aircraft settling on the windowsills, no barking dogs, no kids, no nothing. It was tough to return to San Diego because we probably could have lived there quite happily. The only sounds were the wild birds and the gentle clucking of the owner’s chickens who were nice enough to provide us with breakfast every morning.

Consider these “snapshots”:

I had heard a long time ago that there was an elephant seal rookery somewhere along the coast of California. Fortunately, a short internet search revealed that one of them was about halfway between here and Monterey along the Pacific Coast Highway and happened to be on our route. I wasn’t expecting much (it’s my style to plan for the worst then I’m never disappointed) but I was pleasantly wrong.

We made it through LA without succumbing victims to a highway shootout and not long after leaving that cesspool in the dust, the landscape transformed into those postcard scenes of California that are disseminated all over the world: breathtaking rocky coastlines, azure blue water and the green rolling hills peppered with cows and horses. We took a break for lunch in a touristy village with stores called “shoppes”. Faux quaint. Kind of like the Amish version of any small town in south-east Lancaster PA, the theme being “wine” instead of Amish. All I could think about was what was up the road at the rookery as I ate my avocado sandwich.  Real live elephant seals? Empty sand? Fat tourists? Score on the first and third accounts.

The two-lane winding road suddenly gave way to a snarl of cars coming and exiting a parking lot on the coast side of the road, but we managed to squeeze through the scrum into the lot. We got out of the car and heard barking, wheezing, crying, whining, farting, and blowing noises….and saw this:

Of course, this elicited my stock phrase upon seeing a new animal: HOLY SHIT! and I started snapping photos. The light was not in my favor this time of day, but c’est la vie.  The seal viewing area was designed for optimum viewing by humans and minimal disturbance to the animals. It’s not visible on this photo,but on the left side was a raised fenced walkway that allowed people to look down on the animals. The seals seemed completely oblivious to the hundreds of people watching. The photo shows a rather placid scene, but it was anything but. Babies were wailing to be fed, mothers were bellowing, flippers were throwing sand, western gulls quarreled for the newborns’ placentas, Brewer’s blackbirds scoured in between mountains of blubber looking for scraps of who-knows-what, and the males growled and bellowed and inflated their snouts in intimidating authoritarian displays.

It was thought that these animals were extinct in the 1880′s but a small population remained off the cost of Baja California in Mexico. First protected by Mexico and then the US, the seals rebounded and today there is an estimated population of about 170,000 animals. For ten months of the year, elephant seals are at sea feeding almost constantly and only come to shore twice a year – to molt and either to breed or rest if a young animal. The females are beached for 5 weeks while they give birth and nurse their pups, the males up to 100 days. None of them eat during this time but survive off the massive fat stores that they’ve built up over the months at sea.

The size of the bulls was simply unbelievable. They typically weigh between 3000 and 5000 pounds, sometimes more. Each monolithic male was surrounded by his harem of females with pups. I’m not sure how many ladies he can tend, but it seemed as if there were about 10 females around each male.

It’s always thrilling for me to see a new animal for the first time, but this was especially exciting. It’s not often that a person has the opportunity to see enormous wild animals at such close proximity carrying out natural behaviors. You can actually stand on the viewing platform and watch the cows giving birth! I could have sat there all day, but Gene likes to get from point A to point B in the shortest time possible, so I was regrettably forced to leave. 

One of the benefits of being so close to the San Diego zoo is that the museum recieves all of their dead animals. The byproduct of all those deaths is the growth of the museum’s collection and knowledge repository as well as an exciting opportunity for volunteers such as myself to get our hands on rare and exotic animals, even if they are deceased.

In typical specimen preparation, the birds are carefully skinned and stuffed so as to retain their natural shape and plumage arrangement. Some of the skull, wing, and leg bones are left intact. However, all deceased animals at the zoo are required to have a necropsy which significantly compromises our ability to preserve the animals’ integrity. Whoever does the necropsy chops them up fairly severely which makes it impossible for us to do a stuffed specimen. Instead, we prepare a skin and save the entire skeleton. We denude the skeletons of flesh and then take them offsite where a large colony of dermestid beetles does the fine tuning.

Last week I had the chance to work on a bird called a Kagu, a long-legged, grayish-blue bird endemic to the mountain regions of New Caledonia. This week I prepared a hooded pitta and a Cuban amazon parrot, birds native to Asia and the Caribbean, respectively.  It is impossible to capture in either words or photographs how beautiful the feathers are on birds when you see them up close. The two photos here show the interesting refractive light properties of feathers. I took the same photo, just at a slightly different angle. The blue you see in birds’ feathers has no blue pigment whatsoever. In fact, there is no blue pigment in nature at all and the brilliant blues and purples you see in birds like this parrot (and more common birds like jays, starlings and grackles) is all due to just how the light hits them. Note that in the second photo the green feathers appear as they would if the blue were taken away – as yellow.

Gene, Little Buddy and I are off tomorrow for a 4-day weekend in Carmel and Monterey. I found that elephant seals are pupping this time of year so w’re going to stop at San Simeon on the way there to see them. Check back next week for photos. Carmel is supposedly spectacular.

The Soma Nomaoi festival started over 1000 years ago in the year 973 when the founder of the Soma family, Taira no Masakado, used wild horses in a military exercise in which he released them on the plains for his cavalry to pursue and capture. In the following years the custom was passed on to successive clan leaders as an homage to the clan and also Shinto deities.

We left Yokosuka at 3am. I looked around at the other passengers on the bus and was shocked to find myself the only one not sleeping. How on earth anyone can sleep when going to a new place is beyond me. It gets light here at 4:30am and by that time we were heading out the north end of Tokyo, leaving the concrete behind and entering into the countryside. It was so nice to get out of the city - even if only for a day – and breathe fresh air.

We arrived at 9am and I paired up with a really cool chick named Nathalie. Not wanting to be seen with a group of loud Americans, we quickly bailed out and made our way to the parade or ogyouretsu お行列. We found seats on the curb, but that didn’t suit the trio of ojiisans (grandpas) behind us who insisted we sit we sit in the shade with them as soon as they rearranged themselves and made room.  I’m always a hit with the old men here as soon as I start unleashing the Canon camera equipment.

I’m a fan of Akira Kurosawa movies and what I saw coming down the street made me feel as if I were in Ran or Seven Samurai - legions of samurai on the backs of horses of the highest athletic caliber, complete with swords at their sides were making their way down the street. Nathalie and I stood there agape for the entirety of the parade. The reason they looked real was because this was about as real as it gets without access to a time machine. I read in my festival guide that the armor, helmets, swords and horse tack are all original and not reproductions. Most of them have been passed down through the years from father to son.

The festival spans 3 days, but we were there on the second day which has the most action.  After the parade, all 600 riders filed into a racetrack area and prepared for kacchu-keiba 甲冑競馬, or race of 10 riders and horses at a time. Ten horses and riders gathered at a starting point and raced once around the track or 1000 meters.

The shinki-sodatsusen 神旗争奪戦、or flag scramble, started at 1pm with an explosion of fireworks directly above the grass field inside the racetrack. Out of the explosion fell two flags which the boiling throng of horses and men were waiting to catch. The triumphant knight who catches the flag breaks from the scrum and charges up the hill on a path winding through the spectators to claim his prize.

This was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve done here and I am so glad I didn’t let the early departure dissuade me from going.  The festival has been designated as Important Cultural Property and seems to have some notoriety outside Japan. I saw a crew of western filmmakers there, but I couldn’t tell what kind of white they were. I’d love to know what they were all about but they were busy filming the action and I didn’t want to bug them. Besides, I had my own photography to take care of and wasn’t in the mood to waste time socializing. Their t-shirts said “Soma 2007 Documentary Film Crew” or something like that. So if someone sees anything about this on TV in the coming years, please let me know.

I guess the really appealing aspect of this was the history. Being American means you probably don’t have too deep of a cultural history. Half the people there don’t even know what their real family names were before they were butchered and abbreviated when coming through Ellis Island. I just can’t imagine having such a deep and old history like this. It must be so cool to be such an integral part of a country and its land.

My friend Kazu Shinoda, field trip coordinator of the Japanese bird club Ornitho, emailed me last week and asked if I’d be interested in coming on the July trip to Mt Fuji and a nearby spring not far from Yamanakako, the largest of the 5 lakes in Fuji’s shadow.  We arrived a place called Okuniwa which is the fourth rest station on the way up the mountain at an elevation of about 2200 meters (7217 feet).  If you look at this map Mt Fuji is clearly visible as the grey circle. We were just a few kilometers west of the “702″ road number indicator. The lake on the right side of the map is Yamanakako.

About 1 km beyond Okuniwa is the fifth station which is the highest point accessible by car and is the embarkation point for hikers on their trek to the summit crater. Is is also the treeline beyond which is a moonscape of black rocks and gravel, completely devoid of life. The fascination with climbing Fujisan eludes me but many foreigners living and visiting Japan hike to the top every summer. I considered climbing it at a few points over the years, but finally admitted to myself that I really have no interest in torturing myself. It’s not a pleasant undertaking in any way; the lack of oxygen gives most people a splitting headache, it’s crowded, it’s not pretty, the fifth station accomodations are less than ideal and it’s simply just more trouble than it’s worth…in my estimation. More importantly, out of all the Japanese people I know (which is a lot at this point), only one of them has climbed Mt Fuji and that was 20 years, 25 pounds and 7500 packs of cigarettes ago. If the natives don’t care, then neither do I.

Okuniwa is a good spot for watching birds because it’s at the highest elevation possible and still within the forest…if you could call this otherwordly scene of stunted, gnarled trees a forest. There isn’t much that could be considered soil, so the trees do what they can with what little resources are available and all of them are species that are adapted to harsh conditions. There are a variety of lichens and mosses growing on the rocks and trees that soften up the angular, rocky landscape.

About 30 feet from the entrance to the lodge is a small pool that attracts a variety of woodland birds summering on the mountain. The tiny pools also attract legions of birders and photographers. There were 8 people in our party, but we were joined by a bird club from Chiba that was quite large, maybe 12 or 15 people.  Okuniwa is a comfortable birdwatching site. Visitors can sit inside the lodge on tatami while enjoying a bowl of soba and watching the birds.

We spent most of the day on Mt Fuji, and then late afternoon drove down to Yamanakako to visit a spring that is frequented by birds of an entirely different ecosystem. We saw a nice variety of birds there and then left at dusk to have dinner at a restaurant on the shore of Yamanakako.

I’ll probably join the bird club again for one last outing before we leave Japan. I’ve been on a lot of trips with this group and they’re about as nice as people can get, so I am really fortunate to have met them. Japan birding is extremely difficult due to the extraordinarily difficult terrain (the mountains here are sometimes completely unnavigable) and lack of English in prime birding locations. Most of the good birding sites are only known to locals and are hard to find. Shinoda-san is fluent in English and frequently hosts birding foreigners.

Here’s a list of yesterday’s sightings:

Japanese thrush
Blue and white flycatcher
Narcissus flycatcher
Varied tit
Coal tit
Grey tit
Japanese white eye
Bullfinch
Siberian bluechat
Barn swallow
Goldcrest
White-throated needletail
White-rumped swift
Japanese pygmy woodpecker
Brown-eared bulbul
Japanese accentor
Siberian blue robin
Japanese bush warbler
Arctic warbler
Thick-billed crow
Nutcracker

English-speakers, there is nothing wrong with you computer. This is in Japanese. 

ごめんなさい、　私は　長い時間　日本語を書きませんでした！　このごろ　　非常に忙しかったです。

二週前に　私のアメリカの友達は　日本に　来ました。　友達は　日本で　素晴らしい　時を過ごして、　日本人が　とても　優しいと思いました。私たちは　日光と箱根と東京とたくさん面白い所に　行きました。週の末に私は疲れました。　でも　素晴らしい　時間を過ごしました。

先土曜日に　Geneと私は　東京に行って、　ニュウ　サンオ　ホテル　に滞在しました。ニュウ　サンオ　ホテルは　アメリカの軍用のホテルです。　

たくさん　ともだちは　私の相撲の写真を誉めました。賛辞をありがとう　ございます。私は日本の文化の経験を感謝します。

今日　写真を撮るために　しょうぶ園に　行きました。

The New Sanno (the US military hotel in Tokyo) has a package deal where you can get a room on the weekend if you eat at their restaurant, Wellington’s. That’s pretty much the only way you’re going to get a reservation on the weekend, but nobody has to twist our arms to dine there. The food is fabulous and very reasonable for a quality restaurant in Tokyo.

We decided to drive since we had to carry decent clothing for the evening and it was a piece of cake. I had some unfounded trepidation about driving in Tokyo, but it was no problem at all and only took about an hour. We dropped the car off at the hotel and took the train downtown to a German beer festival in Hibiya Park. It was a lively festival made even more spirited by the enormous glasses of hefe-weisen being consumed en-masse by the people in attendance. The food was pretty good. I had a soft pretzel and a plate of potato pancakes…and a lot of beer which was kind of a mistake. Everyone knows that hot sun and beer are a lethal combination.

They had three bands scheduled, one of which was a polka ensemble of two German guys. While waiting for them to play, we were subjected to probably the worst singers I’ve ever heard. They were a couple of old American guys playing blues songs and they were simply awful. We moved to the tables as far away from them as possible with the intent to distance ourselves from the din and also to minimize any association to these tone-deaf Americans. The funny thing was that all the other Americans and Europeans in attendance were equally repulsed and soon everyone with round eyes had polarized themselves from the band and were sitting in our area. The auditory train-wreck didn’t seem to put a damper on the festivities of a particular group of Nihonjin because they were really whooping it up.

The Emporer’s palace was a short distance from Hibiya Park so we walked over there to have a look around. Pretty cool. Then we went back to the hotel for a desperately-needed nap and our sumptuous dinner in the hotel restaurant. We came back to the base this morning after a large breakfast. I’m tired of eating and it’s time for some exercise.

By Thursday my guests didn’t seem to be wearing down at all…but I was. I was actually starting to wonder if something was wrong with me because I was so tired. But I guess after a week of talking pretty much non-stop, hours and hours spent on a train, and general sensory overload, any normal person would be exhausted. Liz just emailed me and said they returned home on Saturday and she went to bed at 11pm and woke up at 3:35 the next day, so I guess it wasn’t just me.

Coincidentally the 2007 May Grand Sumo Tournament started the same day of their arrival, so I got us tickets for Thursday. I had no idea what to expect and since our tickets were cheap, I assumed we’d be very far away from the action. We had reservations at a hotel that night in Tokyo after a full day of sightseeing and I didn’t feel like dragging around a whole complement of heavy camera equipment, so I left it at home. Which was a total mistake because we had decent seats and the photos would have been fantastic. I took my old camera, a small Canon G5 and got these really poor shots. But, as luck would have it, a friend of mine hooked me up with a ringside seat at today’s match! We’re leaving at 1pm and I’m taking all my good equipment so check back soon to see the results of my first foray into sports photography.

After sumo we went next door to the Edo-Tokyo Museum which was really nice.

The Edo-Tokyo Museum was founded on March 28,1993, as the place, where visitors come to learn more about Tokyo’s history and culture , and which also serves as a projection onto the city and the living of the future. In the Permanent Exhibition area, there can be found original and replicated exhibits, as well as large-scale models, faithful representations of their originals, which have been reproduced after painstaking investigations and research.

If you are interested in the history of Tokyo and the Edo period, this is a great place to get a lot of history packed into a couple of hours. The exhibits are very well done and it’s a tremendous learning opportunity.

After the musuem, and a short stop in Akihabara, we went to our hotel and relaxed for a bit with some dinner before heading back out to Shibuya for some karaoke. I love karaoke, but I do have a complaint about the accompanying visuals. Two of the many songs we sang were Lynyrd Syknyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama and AC-DC’s Touch Too Much. I know, I know, tired old songs by American standards, but when you’ve been away from your native culture this long they take on a a whole new significance, just trust me. Here’s a shot of the screen for each song which is just one illustration of some of the many American cultural items here that are gruesomely botched in translation:

Pastel Downtown Miami + Lynryd Skynryd = Ronnie Van Zandt coming back from the grave to kick some Japanese karaoke producer’s ass. Everyone knows that a guy in a wife-beater and a can of Budweiser should be involved somehow.

I was a little late with the camera for the AC-DC one. Immediately before that tree scene, they showed a very cute close-up of an Eastern Gray Squirrel.  Bucolic park scenes of picnickers and cute squirrels paired with Bon Scott (a man who died in the back of a car, the result of choking on his own vomit after a night of ribald behavior and power drinking) screeching things like She wanted it hard, And wanted it fast, She liked it done medium rare is a bizarre juxtaposition.  Although I really enjoy those types of scenes, and squirrels, they’re not exactly conducive to rockin’ out to a debauched AC-DC song. Oh well, I guess that’s what the shochu is for and I can’t really blame that karaoke people either. Those are the kinds of things you just don’t get unless you really live in the US.
 I almost forgot to mention day 6. We slept in pretty late (our hotel, despite being a government facility, had temperature control which was a welcome relief from our apartment here on base. The system-wide heat was turned off about 2 months ago and the air conditioning will not come on until the authorities deem it appropriate, usually the end of May. You can imagine what it’s like on the 9th floor where we live. I slept great at the hotel!) and then had a leisurely breakfast before setting off for the base. I wasn’t expecting a crowded train since it was 11:30 by the time we were ready to leave Tokyo. Boy, was I wrong! We got on the Yamanote Line at Ebisu with the intent to switch trains at Shinagawa and it was one of the top 3 most-crowded trains I’ve been on yet. I can’t handle that kind of crowding and like the rest of the Japanese commuters, I retreated into my own dark place in my mind and just kind of shut down. That’s the only way to cope. Foreigners get on trains in Japan and just don’t understand why everyone looks like a stonefaced zombie – it’s only a coping mechanism.  They’re just hiding as best they can. My friends were not used to this kind of thing and of course were at a loss as to what to do.  I am actually glad that they got a great good-bye gift from the city of Tokyo; the infamous sardine-packed Yamanote Line! Chalk it up to one more cultural experience!

Owakudani is the area around Mt Hakone, about 2 hours’ train ride from here, and is a hotbed of geothermal activity. The last eruption of Mt Hakone occurred about 2000 years ago, but volcanic activity can still be found at several locations.
The notable thing about Owakudani is the smell – the geothermal vents spew out boiling sulfurous water and gas which makes the area smell quite foul. The sulfurous emissions also kill off nearby vegetation, giving the land a poisoned underworldy look. It would be a great place to film a movie set in Hell. Hakone is nationally reknown as a tourist destination, its main draw being hot springs. If you’re not driving a car, getting there is somewhat of a pain because it involves several trains, a ropeway (a train car that’s hauled up the side of a steep mountain by means of a cable) and finally a cable-car. But you get a nice view of the mountains for the greater part of the trip.
I was a little nervous about the cable car but I had to set a good example for my guests and, despite my trepidation, I really wanted to ride on it. We boarded the cable-car and set out above the trees. We weren’t terribly high – maybe 20 feet above the trees and I was thinking this isn’t too bad! We came to a rise but couldn’t see the other side but I figured that the landing pad at Owakudani was just on the other side since the smell of sulfur was really strong. Wrong. We came up over the rise and found ourselves hanging hundreds of feet in the air…then we got blasted with a gust of wind. I was paralyzed with fear. Hideous scenarios raced through my mind; snapping cables, shrieking women, plunging to the earth trapped in a glass bubble, a bloody,shattered glass and and guts pancake lying on the valley floor. Oh! The humanity! But the gruesome scenarios evaporated when I mustered the courage to look up and was the first one to see this:

Lousy photo, but in the interest of accuracy, that’s how it appeared from the cablecar. That view came none too soon because frankly, I was scared shitless and the excitement of a good view of Mt Fuji saved me from losing it completely.

So, we made it to the landing pad and had a good day hanging out in the stinking reek of boiling sulfur. The novelty of Owakudani is using the boiling water to cook eggs that are then sold to the public. Eating black eggs boiled in naturally hot water on the side of a mountain full of toxic vapors while looking at Mt Fuji is an experience everyone should have.

We left for Nikko yesterday morning at 6am and the weather was superb. It was definitely the best weather I’ve had on my four trips to Toshogu Shrine. We had a fabulous lunch at a restaurant that was in a house originally built for an American dignitary (I forget who). If you ever go to Nikko, the architecture of this place is hard to miss amid all of the old Japanese structures. It looks like a house from somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania and I highly recommend it for lunch because the food was excellent.

Having visited Nikko so many times coupled with a bad night’s sleep,  I could hardly bring myself to climb the 100 or so stairs to ascend Futarasan Shrine, so I waited at the bottom while everyone else went ahead. It was a fateful decision because as I had just finished attaching my macro lens to photograph some maple leaves, I saw this tiger beetle (Cicindela japana, niwahanmyou, ニワハンミョウ), a new species for me:

Definitely the highlight of the trip for me. Now for some photos that the rest of you might be interested in. I took the shot of the rice paddy from the train.

Some miscellaneous things from the AU trip that I thought were interesting and fun…for those of us interested in parasites, that is. The rest of you might be pretty grossed out.

Queensland’s rainforest isn’t all cuddly possums and endearing and mischievous honeyeaters alighting on your hand, despite what I made out in my previous Australia trip posts. I didn’t mention that the possums continually pooped and peed all over our porch. The particular possum who set up camp on our porch was a male and had typical male urine – pungent and  in copious volume. He had no qualms about eliminating anywhere he happened to be sitting: above the door, on our outdoor table and even on the barbie (the BBQ grill) after it had cooled. We typically woke up to multiple piles of possum poo pellets all over the porch. Occasionally the turkeys would crap on the porch too. That was a real mess.  We didn’t mind though and it certainly didn’t detract from their appeal. After all, everyone’s got to dump.

When we stopped at Crawford’s Lookout on our way to Tarzali, we were met with this disturbing sign at the beginning of the trail.  Appropriately unnerved, we continued our hike without encountering this evil plant and forgot all about it. The stinging tree once again entered our consciousness once we got to Fur n’ Feathers and this time in a big way – the plant was everywhere, including the trails around our treehouse. Pam warned us that this thing was ferocious and to be very careful…which only intrigued me all the more. I couldn’t wait to get on the internet and find out more. I even entertained the idea of touching it just to see what would happen. Really, how bad could it be? Surely this was an exaggeration. Nothing could be worse than poison ivy, right?

Au contraire, you curious and doubting idiot, a voice in my head answered when I got home and consulted the internet. It really is that bad! Turns out, poison ivy is baby food. This thing is a killer, literally. The name of the species is Dendrocnide moroides, or locally gympie gympie, a derivation of an Aboriginal word. The sting is delivered through tiny silicon hairs that cover the leaves and the fruit of the plant. When a human comes into contact with the plant, the hairs penetrate the skin, and then break off. They’re so tiny that often the skin will close over the hairs making removal impossible.

The silicon hairs cause pain because of a neurotoxin produced by the plant which is exacerbated by touch or heating or cooling of the skin. Unfortunately this toxin is very stable and can remain active in a person’s skin for months or even years making every subsequent shower a painful experience. Experiments have been done with hairs that were collected nearly a century ago and they can still cause pain.  But you can suffer even if you don’t touch the plant. The plants continuously shed their stinging hairs so that staying close to the stinging trees for more than an hour can cause a reaction – intensely painful and continuous bouts of sneezing. You can even get nose bleeds from these silicon hairs floating in the air.

The reaction depends on what species of animal gets stung, and how many hairs get stuck in the skin. Humans feel something between mild irritation and intense pain and death. The pain comes immediately after touching the plant, and it gradually increases to a peak after about 20-30 minutes. The Dutch Botanist H. J. Winkler made the only official recording of Death By Stinging Tree, for a human. It was in New Guinea, back in the early 1920s. There have been other anecdotal stories from soldiers in WW II suffering intense pain, and of an officer shooting himself because of the unrelenting pain – but these are anecdotal stories.

Stinging trees are harmless to many native Australian species, but hideously painful to introduced species such as humans, horses and dogs.  Like capsicum (red pepper) the pain is real and intense, but the body does not suffer any damage. (Information paraphrased from here.) I find it incredible that a plant has this power to cripple simply by brushing up against it.

When I say that I left a part of me in Australia, I do not mean in the poetic sense. I carried a pretty heavy parasite load while in the jungle. I was ravaged by mosquitoes. The rainforest is reputed to have few mosquitoes, and not even all that many in the rainy season. But apparently every single one of them in the Atherton Tablelands sought me out and bit me. Gene didn’t get any bites. I also was host to many leeches, four of which had attached and begun exsanguinating me. Both of us found a good number of them on our pants, shoes and socks. There are around 100 species of leeches in Australia, but several of them have adapted to life in the forest rather than water. In wet weather they lie in wait on foliage or on the forest floor for a passing mammal. I was overcome with revulsion and an almost irrepressible reaction to immediately detach and kill them, but once I was able to stifle it long enough for Gene to take a photo. I later realized that I hadn’t shaved my legs in some time, so I won’t be posting the offending image here. You’ll have to make do with this:

I know they’re gross as hell and there is something so innately repugnant about them…but they are interesting animals. They keep their host’s blood flowing by use of an anticoagulant that is quite remarkable. I bled for 30 minutes after pulling them off. Pretty neat.

One evening we were sitting around and I felt a familiar sensation right underneath the elastic in my underwear at the top of my leg. I was horrorstruck; Oh god, no. Please, not chiggers!  I went to the bathroom and found a lone mite embedded in my skin. Which was somewhat of a relief since when I lived in North Carolina I suffered from severe infestations most of the summer months – I could handle one of them, not hundreds. I remembered seeing some insecticide under the sink and used a small dab of it to kill and remove the little bastard. Disaster averted. Such are the dangers that await the jungle traveller and I loved every minute of it.

I was a little disappointed that we didn’t see any snakes. Australia is home to three of the most venemous snakes in the world: the inland taipan, the king brown, and the coastal taipan. Two of those three are found in Queensland. It was still exciting just knowing that they were potentially right outside our door.

Here are some other photos. From left to right, emerald dove, green catbird, turkey feet, turtle, female Victoria Riflebird growing in some scalp feathers after what appears to be a serious molt episode, and a masked lapwing:

Here are photos frmo Rieko of the game we played. Players are supposed to throw the fan and knock that thing off the box. It was a lot harder than it looks.

 And here’s our dinner, post-onsen. This was great. I loved cooking my own food over the coals. They served venison which I couldn’t even bring myself to eat. It was raw. Incredibly, my mom ate it and loved it.

The Toshogu Shrine area in Nikko is always a great place to take visitors and I have learned to never put off a visit because of rain. I consistently get great shots there when it’s wet because the colors are so saturated and overcast skies create a wonderful and diffuse light. We were lucky enough to happen upon a wedding taking place but shots were tough because they were inside a dark building.

All of my pictures are starting to look the same so I reluctantly dug out the lens that came with my camera when I bought it. It’s perhaps the shittiest lens ever and is totally cheap but it does go down to 18mm which is a great focal length for wide angle shots. The problem is that the photo quality is abject crap. I really need to get a wide angle lens before I leave here. It sucks having an expensive hobby.

Nikko’s rough if you have a problem climbing – there are stairs everywhere. My mom couldn’t handle it anymore so she took a break:

After Nikko, Heike Village. This place was an aggregation of original Heike buildings for public viewing. Inside were all kinds of tools and implements used in everyday life in that time period. None of it was fake…at least it didn’t look like it to a tourist like myself.

By this time I was beat down tired and was ready for an onsen. We found our hotel, checked in and went to the onsen…but on the way there we were waylaid by a group of people playing Japanese darts. We joined in the fun for while but needed to get moving since we had dinner reservations for 6pm. Photos from that experience will come later since Rieko was the only person with a camera and hasn’t yet sent me the photos. 

The Bankyu Hotel spanned a creek and to get from the guest house to the dining area visitors had to cross a rope bridge that wasn’t all that stable. We tottered across the bridge in our yukatas (which amounts to nothing more than a cotton bath robe), haoris (old-style Japanese jackets), and geta (traditional shoes) surrounded by snow and ice with the wind crawling up our yukatas and freezing our bare asses.  But it was worth getting scared shitless and frozen when we reached the other side – a seat on a pillow next to a pit of hot coals that was warming skewers of fresh fish and hot sake, a personal table loaded with enough food to feed even an American, and an enka performance by Ms. Heike herself was waiting for us. Dinner was a vast menu of more things than I can even mention but it consisted mainly of mountain food which I really enjoy. It was a ridiculous amount of grub but I was able to eat almost all of it. 

The next day we went to a waterfall and then to Edo Wonderland. The Edo period in Japanese history was an important period for a number of reasons.  In 1603, Tokugawa Ieyasu was appointed Shogun by the emporer and established his government in Edo, now called Tokyo. The Tokugawa shoguns continued to rule Japan for 250 years. During the Edo period most of what people consider traditional Japanese culture was born and flourished; kabuki theater, tea ceremony, literature, painting, martial arts and other popular culture endeavors. The reason Japanese culture is so unlike anything in the rest of the world was because in 1633 shogun Iemitsu forbade travelling abroad and almost completely isolated the country from foreign influence. Contacts to the outside world were reduced to very limited trade relations with China and the Netherlands in the port of Nagasaki only and, in addition, all foreign books were banned. In this isolated and stable microcosm, Japanese culture was able to become highly specialized and refined producing a unique style that is recognizable by almost anyone. And then in in June 1853, the U.S. East India Fleet, commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, entered Uraga Harbor (which is just down the road from us) and brought with him McDonald’s and KFC which is what actually killed off the samurai – they all got coronary artery disease. Anyway, it was the end of the Edo Period and the beginning of the Gaijin Invasion.

So, Edo Wonderland was modeled on this period and all the employees walked around in appropriate costumery and staged a number of plays. We watched a play about poor farmers and ninjas that was excellent, but unfortunately there were no subtitles for the two Americans in the crowd. We enjoyed it anyway.

So my mom got a gutload of culture packed into a very short time and we took it easy the rest of the week. Here are some photos from Kamakura:

My mom arrived last Friday and I just returned from seeing her off at the airport. I must admit that I was really impressed with her stamina and adventurous spirit on this trip. She’s from Lancaster PA which is a bastion of tasteless food – the strongest spices used in the local cuisine are salt and pepper so I didn’t have high hopes for her venturing too deeply into Japanese cuisine. I couldn’t have been more wrong. On her second night here she ate the infamous natto…even after she smelled it. And then she moved on into eating sashimi which was also fairly impressive. This was her first trip out of the US. I think that people who’ve never left the US think for some reason that they can’t travel or that it’s really difficult. All this strange and forbidding territory is just out of their realm of reality…so they think until they actually take the plunge and go somewhere. Now that she’s overcome that mental hurdle, I am relatively certain she’ll go somewhere else. Any travel after a journey to Japan will seem like only a hop, skip and a jump away.

We had a great time but were totally burned out by the end of the week. We started the trip off at full-steam with a day of sightseeing in Nikko, a stop at Heike Village (really cool) and then overnight at Bankyou Ryokan in Yunishigawa Onsen about 90 minutes north of Nikko. Yunishikawa Onsen was discovered in 1573 when the Heike Clan used the area as a hideaway when they fled the Genji clan after a battle in which they had been defeated. They settled in the area and you can still experience their influence in local cuisine and customs.  Bankyou Ryokan was really cool and unique even by Japanese standards. It’s a 400 year-old hotel owned and operated by a 25th-generation direct-descendant of the Heike family. We had a spectacular dinner around an irori (a square fire pit in the floor used for warmth and cooking) in our yukatas after a dip in the in-house onsen. The next day we visited a waterfall and a historic park that was comparable to Williamsburg in Virgina, except that it was geared a little more towards kids rather than adults.

We spent the rest of the week touring locally with trips around the Miura penisula and Tokyo. We went to Ueno Park to see the cherry blossoms, then on to Kappabashi, Tokyo’s kitchenware district, and finally to Harajuku to Aki’s for haircuts and a massage.

Mr Hanzawa, a student a friend, came over for dinner Friday night to experience some Lancaster County home cooking and meet my mom. She made pot pie which he thought was fantastic. I figured that would be a dish that would suit the Japanese palate; bland dough with some salt and vinegar. I thought I was terminally burned-out on pot pie, but after not having eaten it for probably 20 years, it tasted pretty darn good.

I’ve got a lot more photos, but we’re getting ready to watch this week’s Lost episode, so I’ll post more later.

Oh, and now I can leave Japan – I saw wild monkeys for the first time. We were driving over a mountain outside of Nikko and there was a group of them in the trees alongside the road.  I told somebody a long time ago that I won’t leave her until I see monkeys. Snow monkeys and platypus all within 9 days -what more could a person ask for?!