Holes in the Story

Stop me if I’ve told you this before: one thing that makes Japan unique is its manhole* covers.  Almost anywhere else in the world you go, these discs of iron are relatively plain, utilitarian items.  Japan, on the other hand, has a sense of aesthetics to maintain.  Throughout its artistic history Japan has never been satisfied with simply making functional objects, when they can make them beautiful as well.

Nowhere is this as evident as right by your feet as you walk down the sidewalk.  On my walk to church each Sunday I pass a variety of sizes of sakura manhole covers.  It has probably occurred to me - about the time I was working on mixed media - that it would be really cool to take rubbings of the different sizes and use them to create a huge, mixed media piece.  I haven’t been as enthusiastic about this idea since I discovered that plum blossoms were WAY better flowers, but I haven’t entirely given up the idea of making some collagraphys, either.

Now some of these covers are plain metal, but not all of them.  Some are inlaid with enamel, making them even more eye-catching.  And one of the best things about Japan’s manhole covers is that each city has its own designs.  Those sakura covers are only found in Tokyo, as far as I know.  Yokohama has the bay bridge on theirs.  Himeji’s has their famous castle.

This element of collectibility, where you have to catch them all as you travel, has led to a class of beings called...I kid you not...manholers.  I first learned about this pastime through This Is Colossal, although there have been several news stories about them over the last several years.  And since Japan loves its festivals, it should come as no surprise that someone eventually thought to capitalize on it and create a manhole celebration...and in fact, that is exactly what Tokyu Hands in Shinjuku did about a month ago.  They brought examples of different manholes from all over Japan as well as all sorts of merchandise for the hardcore manholer to enjoy.

After my relatively recent encounter with Golden Kamuy macarons I had to try these beautiful treats (sadly, they were not even on the same level).  Even more, though, I enjoyed their hands-on activity - the opportunity to finally, FINALLY, print with one of these bad boys.  I’ve been dreaming of printing something with a Japanese manhole cover ever since I read about some Germans who were printing with far less fancy covers (but who, sadly, never responded to my teacherly query about what kind of ink they use).  Now I have a nice canvas tote bag with that Tokyo sakura cover printed in green.  What I need another tote bag for beats me, but it was totally worth it, especially since it put me up to the 2,000 yen needed to draw for a prize.  I got exactly the prize I wanted, too - a button that proudly proclaims that I’m a manholer.  Because who wouldn’t want something as perfect as that???

*if the word ”manhole” makes you snicker every time you hear it, that might explain why we’re friends.

Barbie Girls

You can tell when winter is almost over.  The plum trees start to blossom, and suddenly there are hina dolls displayed everywhere.  I saw these in the middle of the train station in Shiroishi last month, and saw a similar display in Yokohama Station a week or two ago.  That doesn't mean that winter is quite over, though.  It's been raining throughout the last week, which pissed me right off and was one of the reasons I decided against going to the Nagashibina.  I loved the ritual last year but standing in the cold rain did NOT seem like a fun way to start my Sunday.

This time last year I was filled with unspeakable rage because my fellow Americans were being a bunch of lunatics.  This Hina Matsuri - a festival dedicated to the prosperity and protection of girls - I'm raging again, but you'll have to wait a few months to hear that particular rant.  Suffice it to say that the timing of a holiday concerned with those blessings of prosperity seemed somewhat ironic this year.  (As far as protection goes, nothing makes me feel as safe as toting around the bachi I use for taiko class - and hey - bonus! I can practice while I walk!)

As far as I'm concerned, there was never any question as to whether or not I was going to mark Girls' Day this year with a blog.  (Seriously, people, I make dolls for my hobby.  This was always going to happen).  That said, I did try to find new things to see.  I knew there were several displays around Tokyo, and although I passed over my first choice because I didn't have time after painting on Saturday,* my second choice, though, was just a couple of stops away in Shinjuku.  Keio Plaza Hotel had a special display of tsurushi hina, hanging decorations, along with some works of art that made me think of the paintings Maria's students always paint around this time of year.  Except, you know, better (technically, at least.  I'd argue that a lot more heart goes into the student work).

Just as hina dolls evolved from the doll floating rituals, hanging decorations are an Edo-era tradition that emerged from the desire of less affluent families hoping to participate in the holiday.  Turns out the full hina display is pretty damn pricey, and not everyone could afford them.  Instead, the women of the family would come together to craft small decorations that hung from red cords.

The ones at Keio Plaza were made of kimono silk by quilting artist Mitsuyo Matsuo and her artist group, Himawari.  I've bought a LOT of fabric scraps in the last month or so, and it made me think about how cool it would be to make my own tsurushi hina...but since I already have a backlog of sewing projects I want to make, this probably won't happen anytime soon.  Making my own display, on the other hand, seemed relatively straightforward and not too time consuming.  I've been thinking about using my nendoroids to set up a hina matsuri display ever since I read about the Hatsune Miku hina doll made by Mataro last January.**

I learned a lot about the meanings behind the dolls when I visited the Ando Doll workshop in Kyoto last fall.  I tried to keep it in mind when I made my own Hina Matsuri display, but I didn't have dolls that fit.  The top step is supposed to be the emperor and empress.  Since I didn't have any nendoroids that are couples, I just chose my favorites.  The next step is supposed to be the three court ladies, but I only have two female nendos.  Instead, I made this the warrior step and included my sword boys and Roy Mustang.  The third step is supposed to be the musicians, so I went with a general ntheme of entertainment and called it good.  You might notice that I'm lacking most of the furnishings that go along with the set, but with a move looming there was no way I was buying more crap to pack up.

The VERY sweet icing on this year's doll cake was going to the Strawberry-holic buffet at The Strings Omotesando with Sensei and the Director.  About a month ago I decided I needed to eat as many strawberry desserts as I could before the season is over, and having them all at the same time seemed like a good idea.***

Apparently these buffets have themes.  I mean, besides “strawberries.”  There were at least a couple of other strawberry buffets going on recently, one with the theme of cats and another that featured - wait for it! - Godzilla.  This one was, appropriately enough, doll-themed, with so many Barbies scattered around the buffet and tables that they must have visited every Mandarake on Honshu to round up enough to pull it off.  As far as the food goes, there was a token lunch side, with salads, curry, and the best damn mac and cheese I’ve had since I last made it in Mongolia, but I don’t think anyone wasted too much time on real food.  We were all there for the desserts, and they were excellent.  That said, at 4500 yen we were all keen to get our money’s worth, and it’s possible that all three of us ate more than we should.  I definitely wanted to just lie down and have someone roll me home with a stick; as it was, I went into hibernation mode as soon as I got to my apartment.

I was about to say that was how my Hina Matsuri ended, except that’s not quite true.  I’ve been taking a photography course for my master’s this term, and our current project is light painting.  I originally wanted to work with shrine imagery - I still do, and I’m pretty sure this is going to play into my final portfolio - but then I thought about the nagashi hina and decided - since it was just after Girls’ Day - to make my own as a subject for my photo.  This course has been much harder than I was expecting, but at the same time, I’m pretty happy with some of the photos I got.  I’m still hoping to improve on them by taking photos in the stream near my house, but for now I feel like I have a good start.  

*I'm still hoping to write about the place it was later.  I mean, I probably have to write a Shinsengumi post at some point, right???
**I think I'd have a lot of fun designing other pop culture dolls with them, but the clock is ticking.
***Time has proven otherwise.

The Otaku Report: New Year, New Love

Anime boyfriends are the best.  My friends may tease me, but it's true.  For starters, they are literal works of art.  Anime boyfriends don't get jealous.  They can't knock you up.  They won't leave you but if you decide it's time to move on, they'll let you go - no stalking or manipulative threats of suicide.  I know, because it hasn't been so long since I left my last anime boyfriend for my current one, and this post is about the shopping days of a certain anime fan in a certain city.  Because I needed some new swag.

Being away from Japan during Jump Festa and Comiket was torture.  On one hand I was enjoying my time with the fam, but every time Twitter butted in with a notification it was like being stabbed with a needle.  At least a few things were left for me when I visited the Jump Shop my first Saturday back, though.  Til that point I hadn't really thought about the fact that Jump might have more/better swag to sell for their titles in their own shop than Animate.  Normally this wouldn't be relevant but Golden Kamuy (aka, my #1 obsession these last few months), is published in Young Jump.  I managed to walk away with a several things I probably didn't need, but that I justified buying by reminding myself that when I'm back in Mongolia I may wish I'd taken better advantage of living in the Promised Land.

Before that happened, though, I treated myself to dinner with my mostly-completed Sugimoto doll, back in December.  Area Q in Harajuku hosted a Golden Kamuy treasure cafe, and although I took a long time deliberating whether or not I needed to go to another cafe, in the end I decided that I deserved that quality time with my new anime boyfriend, just like I’d deserved it with the old one.  The Golden Kamuy cafe had a special dimension to it - you were supposed to hunt for the treasure using QR codes hidden throughout the cafe.  I came loaded for bear (BOKKI!), with a QR reader on my phone, my pocket router, and a mobile charger, in the end, I couldn’t make the magic happen.  You needed a specific app on your phone, which I downloaded while I was there and tried to start up, but there was either issues with my tech or with my Japanese abilities, so in the end I gave up and just enjoyed the cafe.

For the record, I had actually forgotten about to include this little gem in this post until I was sitting at Denny’s indulging in my weekly Coke bender.  I’ve been trying to knock this post out since I wrote about the fox village and I’ve got Hina Matsuri to write about this weekend, so it’s time to buckle down and get shit done.

The thing I was really waiting for didn't happen until school had been back in session for a week.  One theme of this post is the power of Twitter, which is how I learned that there was an exhibition of Ainu art paired with Golden Kamuy at Tokyo Skytree (as well as how I knew about the cafe and some of the other swag I got).  The Skytree is the world's tallest tower, but it's still shorter than Burj Khalifa, so I walked straight past the very long line to ascend to get to the east end of the shopping and entertainment complex.  (Probably this makes me a really bad travel blogger, but in my defense, I was in the early stages of the anklebiter plague and hadn't yet made it home from my monkey trip).  

The Golden Kamuy part of the event actually wasn't that interesting - there wasn't special swag to buy and the "art panels" were just stills from the anime, although I did get a free folder.  The Ainu part of the exhibition, on the other hand, was totally worth going.  Ironically I had just started working on clothing for my Asirpa doll, so it was really cool to get to see specifically how their attush are constructed and decorated.  It had me thinking that I might need to plan on going to Hokkaido on a return trip to Japan, when I actually have enough money to do it properly, with a JR Pass to get me around the whole island.  

There have been a few other things I picked up.  I used the power of Google Translate to order these incredibly tasty macaroons right to my door (hell, I don’t know that I’ve ever thought much about macaroons, and now I can’t get them out of my head), as well as a nice, warm Golden Kamuy chanchanko, leftover from Comiket.  The free hot springs collabo bath salts Animate offered, which tied in with that hot spring episode, were another fierce contender for my favorite.  I also made a side trip to Shosen Grande after a field trip last month to pick up...well, I thought it was a tapestry, but it turned out to be a curtain, and that's okay, because sometimes more is more.  Besides which, I finally finished my second bijinga painting - a nihonga painting of Sugimoto on a small shikishi board, which I very conveniently had a scroll for.  Now, usually the bijinga genre is thou ght of as pictures of beautiful women, but the characters its written with don't specify gender, so I'm subverting it to my own purposes and painting men.  That's just how I roll.

On a separate but related note, I've been forced to reconsider my evaluation of Touken Ranbu (aka, that anime with the sword boys).  I mentioned earlier this school year that I discovered that I had a little otome friend in my grade 4 class.  She asked me if I watched it, and I had to admit that not only had I, I'd also gone to see Mikazuki Munechika at the national museum.  For literacy week she came to school dressed as one of the Toushiro brothers, and when I looked up which one she was, I began to recognize the genius of the anime/game.  See, there's a certain amount of subtext invoked by the usual fans of anime with all male characters, and while I respect everyone's right to enjoy what they enjoy, I get a little pissy when there are multiple figurines of fujoshi-favorite characters but GoodSmile apparently won't make me a Sugimoto n endoroid.

So while I had watched Touken Ranbu, I wasn't obsessed, and on a bad day, I found it irritating and at least a little embarassing.  After seeing how much my fourth grader enjoyed it, though, I decided to watch it again and try to see it with different eyes.  The first thing I noticed was that there is such a variety of personalities, ages, and sizes amongst the touken danshi that there is literally a boy for otome of all ages (or at least there is as long as you don't hate pretty men).  I also decided that the so-called subtext was barely even implied.  After rewatching it, the characters really seem more like best friends or siblings, rather than lovers.  I think it says something sad about our global society that a cartoon about male characters having fun and being caring towards each other (with the occasional battle thrown in to keep things interesting) instantly gets interpreted as being homoerotic rather than as an example of non-toxic masculinity.

It was around that time when I realized that the nendoroids at my Bookoff weren't that expensive and I only had a few months to get my fill of the good life, which ALSO just so happened to coincide with the need for a good old fashioned bout of therapy shopping.  All of which explains how I ended up bringing home my #2 and #3 sword boys this week.  No ragrets.

Crazy Like A Fox

Setting a time limit makes everything seem urgent.  My current life timer is counting down til the end of June/beginning of July, when I'll leave Japan for at least a good long while.  Not only am I sure I'll be back, I'm already kind of planning on when: August 2020.  (That will give me a year to save up money so I can go to Drum Tao's taiko extravaganza that they hold on Kyushu every summer.)  In the meantime, there are things I've got to do before I leave, just in case the great catfish finally sinks the country before I get back.  That's why as soon as our bloody open house was over on Saturday*, I walked over to Yokohama Station and hopped the train up to Tokyo Station, where I caught a shinkansen for the second time in a month, this time heading to Shiroishi.  The next thing I needed to check off my Japan bucket list was the Miyagi Zao Fox Village.

This was a thing Sensei had never heard of before, but Baby Chicken Wing had - she actually asked me before I moved here if I was going to go.  "Hell yes," was the answer, although I never quite figured out when I was going to go.  Thanks to my new shinkansen addiction and what was left of my three-day weekend when the school was done with me, I decided the time was ripe.  The night before I'd finally sat down to find a hotel for the night.  Booking.com set me up with a hotel next to the station for about $80, and if it didn't have a hot spring, it DID have electric air conditioners, unlike the ryokan I stayed at in Jigokudani.  The hotel restaurant, with its all-you-can-eat shabu shabu was just a bonus.  I didn't even care to go out and have a look around that night - just read and relaxed.

The next morning, though, I was out by eight on a mission.  That night I'd run up against a snag - apparently the bus that goes up to the fox village only goes on Tuesdays and Fridays.  This is honestly the stupidest foxing thing I've ever heard: that the main tourist attraction of a very small town only has a bus service on weekdays.  According to the hotel desk, there was no other bus.  I suspected shenanigans, so I asked Sensei to look in Japanese while I wrestled the interwebs in English.  There seemed to be another bus at some point in the past, so I went out looking for it Sunday morning, but had no luck.  Which was too bad, but I stumbled across an interesting shrine and had a closer look at Shiroishi Castle while I was at it.

See, if you can't take a bus to the Fox Village, you're stuck taking a taxi, which costs 4,000 yen each way.  Now when I was a rich art teacher in from Mongolia I wouldn't have given two fox about paying up, but on my current salary with my current expenses, 80 bucks roundtrip is more than I can pay (hell, that's pretty much what my hotel cost).  So when I got back to the station I followed Sensei's suggestion** and held up a drawing of a fox in my sketchbook with the word ikitai in hopes I'd make new friends.  I didn't.  But when I finally decided to suck it up and just go pay for the cab, there were two Taiwanese guys waiting for the cab they'd called, and they asked if I wanted to share.

So finally I was on my way.  It took about a half hour on snowy, winding roads to get there, but finally we pulled up to the main gate.  I carried some trepidations with me.  On the ride up I read some of their recent Tripadvisor reviews and they were pretty bad, complaining about the smell, rude staff, and animal cruelty.  I was at least a little worried it was going to turn out to be a huge waste of money, but I wasn't willing to write it off for a loss.  So I paid my 1,000 yen and followed the sound of yips inside.

Your first glance of the foxes is through cages.  This seemed a little cruel at first, but later I figured out that these were the ones that they use for the optional fox petting experience.  Presumably they have to raise them to be tame enough to be handled by tourists...or else drugged.  In either case, I'm guessing that keeping them with the free-range foxes probably isn't a great idea.

I moved pretty quickly into that enclosure, since that is really what the trek out there is all about.  I was barely through the door when I found two foxes right in front of me, so I grabbed my camera, only to have the gatekeeper tell me not to take pictures.  This was something that was mentioned in one of the Tripadvisor reviews, and for a second I was worried I wouldn't be able to indulge my shutterbug tendencies.  But as I looked around I realized plenty of people were taking photos - just not by the entrance.  So I moved away and started shooting.  On my way out I saw a sign that said the foxes often attack by the entrance - apparently that's why they forbid photography in that area.

I moved on.  There were foxes everywhere, mostly red foxes but there were other breeds and colors, too.  Some of them nipped and postured at each other.  Others were sleeping.  At least one vixen was in heat, because she had several suitors fighting over whose turn it was to "do it like they do on the Discovery channel."

There was definitely a smell, but that goes with the territory.  Animals have smells.  In this case, it was the smell of musk, not urine or poop.  Don't get me wrong - it wasn't really a pleasing aroma, and I still had the ghost of it lingering in my nose til I was halfway back to Tokyo.  But the enclosure didn't seem to be dirty - I didn't find myself trying not to step in shit the way I remember doing as a child when I visited a certain family member with two big Rottweilers and a very small yard.

They had treats that you could buy to feed the foxes.  I didn't get any.  In order to feed them, you go onto a raised platform...kind of like a detached porch?...and toss them to the foxes waiting below.  Not the touching nature experience that you hope for when you hear "feed the animals."  I'm not complaining, really - there was ample evidence that these animals were not pets, not to mention the fact that the staff let you know what not to do and that they weren't responsible if you got your dumb ass bitten.  I crossed that experience off my bucket list as a child that time my Dad let me feed the ostrich through the window at the nature safari around Springfield, and I'm not really in any hurry to repeat it.  But I also didn't feel like spending any more money that day.

There was a...well-worn...Inari shrine in the park as well.  Of all the things to complain about, I think this is the one that actually bothers me.  It's not that I give zero fox about animal rights.  I do, I promise - I just don't think these foxes are particularly mistreated.  The "shrine," on the other hand, seemed like a particularly half-assed attempt to lend an air of legitimacy to the fox village.  We're in Japan, bitches.  This is a country that has been known to build train stations around sacred trees, rather than cutting them down.  The torii were pretty beaten up, and the shrine itself looked more like a chicken coop than housing for the gods.  That didn't stop me from trying to get a good picture; it just made me a little less disappointed when it didn't really happen.

So those are my thoughts on the fox village.  Not the worst way to spend a weekend, although it would have been nice if I could have managed to go to the nearby Kokeshi village (this is the second doll museum with a painting experience I've passed up on these trips, which makes me think I'm going to have to do a grand tour of Japanese dolls on a future trip back to Japan) - as it was I didn't want to pay for another taxi.   For now, I'm grounding myself from road trips until May (aka, firefly squid, take 2)...at least, unless I can figure out how to afford a trip on the Royal Express.  I hear Shizuoka's beautiful this time of year...


*How much do I look forward to not having to work one Saturday a month as of August???  SO much!
**Actually her suggestion was hitchhiking.  And it probably would have been perfectly safe to do so here in Japan, but I wasn't in the mood to stand out in the cold.  Also, I had the small sketchbook, so I wasn't sure if anyone would get the message as they zipped past.

Bullet with Butterfly Wings

So the Monkey Park was great, but do you know what's even better?  Riding the Shinkansen, Japan's bullet train.  Imagine if a train and an airplane fell in love and had a baby.  That's essentially what the Shinkansen is:  clean, fast, and convenient.

To be honest, I wasn't sure if I'd have the chance to ride the Shink before I leave Japan.  As I once (accidentally) told the nerds I left behind, Japan is fucking expensive, and the bullet train is one of the most expensive things I've encountered.  So when I was trying to figure out the logistics of getting to Jigokudani, I actually asked Sensei about taking the slow train.  She looked it up for me, but the Shinkansen turned out to be cheaper, and that was all the provocation I needed.  The following Saturday morning saw me on a platform at Tokyo Station waiting to be allowed to board the train.

See, the train gets into the station, everyone gets off (because Tokyo is the last station on the line, or, in my case, the first), and then the crew goes to town and cleans the whole train in about fifteen minutes.  About five minutes before departure the doors open to let everyone on, and we all file in, in the most polite and orderly way.  I was still getting my backpack and coat settled above my seat when I realized the train was already moving.  I'd hardly felt it take off.

It was so easy.  I'd sprung for the reserved seat, and there was no one sitting next to me the whole hour and forty-five minutes.  I felt the euphoria attached to travel shenanigans take hold of me and I realized that this is what I'd been missing.  It's a little strange, but over the last few years in Mongolia I found myself getting less excited about traveling, and decided it was okay that I wasn't going to have much money for traveling while I was in Japan - after all, everything I wanted to see was here.  That said, I have to admit that when Shutterfly or Facebook remind me what I was doing one year ago, or five, I feel jealous of myself.  I miss being that intrepid traveler, and I have to say, that's one of the things I'm looking forward to the most about going back to Mongolia.

Because, oh yeah, that's happening.  In my last post I mentioned I wasn't renewing my contract.  The kicker is that neither is my successor at my old school.  When I finally told my students I was leaving UB, I tried to reassure them that I might be back, and it turns out that's exactly what I'm doing.  What can I say - I miss them.  And Engrish and Blondie, who are still there.  And having money to travel, and save, and, oh yeah, pay for this master's degree that I'm in the middle of.  I also miss being able to get foot massages and eat hotpot and take taxis.  So that's that.  Back to Mongolia I go!

I enjoyed having an empty seat beside me so much that I actually bought the Shinkansen equivalent of a business class ticket on the way back because I wanted a little more room, and let me tell you, THAT was totally worth it.  I worked on my current sewing project and checked out the bathroom, and watched the trolley witch roll her trolley full of goodies past (I didn't buy anything because this was not the Hogwarts Express so she didn't have any pumpkin pasties or chocolate frogs). 

I loved the whole experience so much that I'm pretty sure I'm going to do it again in two weeks - we have a (sorta) three-day weekend, and I still haven't been to the Zao Fox Village.

Monkey Business

Just before the holidays I got my contract for next year.  It included a significant pay raise and inclusion of airfare, but I realized that just wasn't enough.  Officially, I'm paying for my master's out of pocket, and here I just can't do that AND afford my rock and roll lifestyle.  Unofficially, I'm just not happy at my school.  Teaching anklebiters is tough enough; teaching ones that backtalk and take FOREVER to instruct because they. Will.  Not.  Be quiet! is - turns out - impossible.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg, but that's a discussion for a more appropriate forum.

This got me thinking about what I want to do before I leave Japan.  Hopefully I'll be back, but who knows what the future holds, so I decided to carpe the fuck out of of the diems I have left, which is how I ended up deciding to go to Jigokudani this weekend.  We had a three-day weekend (an actual one, as opposed to one where the school makes us work on the Saturday), so I booked a room at a ryokan and off I went.

One thing I'm really going to miss when I leave Japan is my pocket wifi.  Most of the fact-finding I did about getting to the monkey park I did on the Shinkansen Saturday morning.  When I got off the train I went straight down to the Nagaden train station to get the Monkey Pass, a 3-day pass that gets you into the park free and allows you to ride any of the trains and buses as much as you want.  At the bottom of the stairs I was met by a signboard that said they were being sold at the bus stop.  On the other side of the station.  I fought my way through crowds of gaijin with skis and snowboards (whom I prayed weren't going my way...some were, but I didn't end up throwing any of them off the mountain) and eventually paid my 3,500 yen and went to get snacks before getting on the 1:15 express bus, which takes you nearly all the way to the park. 

It's fortunate that I've been missing Mongolia lately.  If not, I might have been a little resentful of all the snow.  I saw snow for the first time in Tokyo that morning, and it lasted all of 10 minutes.  In the mountains the trees were weighed down with the stuff.  Blondie had warned me to wear good hiking boots, and between my Skechers and my penguin walk, I didn't fall down off of the mountain.  I probably should have rented the crampons - my legs and hips were aching from my unaccustomed gait.  The signage as you go through the onsen town says the park is 1.6 kilometers away...but that really means once you hit the trail. 

Finally I got to the entrance to the monkey park, the end of the 1.6k...which was followed by a steep climb up stairs and along a little more trail.  Before long I hit the cabin - a kind of museum/gift shop/toilet/lockers facility where they stamp your monkey pass, since it's only good for one visit.  This is also the only place you can eat snacks in the park - if the monkeys see or hear plastic, apparently they mob you.  I left my backpack in a locker and went down toward the stream and bathing pools, where the monkeys were doing monkey things.

And luckily, one of them wasn't shy about getting in the water.  It's hard to predict animal behavior, and I probably would have felt a little cheated if none of the monkeys were actually IN the water.  Maybe I should have gotten there earlier, but I got the shots I came for, so I left happy.

And I am happy to report that none of them jumped on my head.  Monkeys always make me a little nervous, and you'd be justified in asking why I keep going to see them.  In this case, I have to say it was the draw of that - as Blondie put it - perfect NatGeo photo.  For an hour or so, I got to pretend I was out on assignment, taking shots of these majestic wild beasts.  All of which is, of course, a fiction - they're not that wild and I'm definitely not a pro-photographer.  However, this term's course for my master's is in photography, so hopefully by summer I'll be a little bit more of one.

This Could Be Love

If you've been reading this blog any length of time, you should know by now that not only do I teach others to make cool ass shit (cause I'm an art teacher, yo), I also make cool ass shit myself.  This is relevant because back in October I got a message from my friend Cori (from the Wayback in Mongolia), asking if I wanted a Cricut Maker.  Her hubby is a mechanical engineer for the company, and during a discussion of anime my name came up and since I'm the target market they offered to send me one if I was interested.

I'm definitely more crafty than tech-y, but I feel like only an idiot lets the opportunity to get new toys slip through their fingers (particularly if you have half-formed dreams of actually making money off your hobbies), so I told her yasss - onegaishimasu!  A few weeks later, a DHL guy was handing over a very large box, and I was facing the fact that until that moment, the whole thing had kind of felt like I'd dreamt it up, and I had some major housekeeping to do before I'd be able to set it up.  I left it sealed in its box as I swept the floors and rearranged my work surfaces.  Then I realized that my iPad is old AF and can't use Cricut Design Space because it won't update to iOS 10.  Luckily my school just bought a class set of iPads, and by promising I was planning to use the Maker for art club and that I would give up my firstborn child* if I broke one, I got permission to borrow one at night or on weekends as needed to get me started.  With that, I was finally ready to break open the box!

It crossed my mind to do an unboxing video for my new toy, but I don't have a cameraman and I've never really seen the point of watching someone else open up something exciting.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that it came with materials for my "first project," so once I got through the intro screens of the app I decided to try it out.

It's a cute card but relatively simple to make.  First I had to load a pen into the tool holder thing, and the Maker took it from there, drawing out the lines that you see.  The fact that they were drawn, not printed was kind of a surprise to me, and had me thinking about what all you might be able to do with a robot to do all of your drawing.  Next it used a blade to cut the cardstock down to size as well as cut out the letters, the tail of the kite, and the places where I inserted the blue.  So far, so good.

That said, the point of having one of these things - for me at least - isn't to make other people's projects, but to make my own.  I decided its first real test would be to cut a pair of glasses for one of my plushies.  Having mislaid my old pattern, I had to redraw it.  Then I had to scan it.  I could have done this at school, but it's mendoksai to use the scanner there, so I used the much more straightforward method and visited my friendly neighborhood combini - all of them have English-speaking copy machines that also print photos (or, you know, the Golden Kamuy paper sumo pdf, which was like Christmas coming early) and scan.  Eventually it made it to the school iPad I borrowed and I uploaded it to Design Space.

When I said above that I'm not very tech-y, I meant it, but as long as it's not too complicated a program, I can usually figure things out.  I think Design Space was created with users like me in mind, because it didn't take too long to figure out how to get it to cut out my glasses.  I was even able to alter the dimensions of it in the program to solve the slight proportion issue my drawing had.  The one issue I had was that I didn't have the right cutting tool for craft foam, so the cuts only went about halfway through...still far enough to be able to "punch out" the glasses.

I had my doll pattern already scanned and ready to go, so I uploaded it and tried cutting out a couple of head shapes.  That went pretty well but I wasn't too sure what to do next.  A week later I had my answer.  After cutting out the head I finally started making my Sugimoto doll, but so far he was bald.  Around two years ago I spoke to my Dark Lord and Master about business strategies** and he'd suggested making kits.  I've been toying with the idea but wasn't sure how to go about doing the hair.  This finally forced me to work on a solution.  I sketched out a pattern for Sugimoto's hair, scanned it in, uploaded it, and set the Maker to work.

At first I wasn't convinced that all the effort was worth it, and for one doll, it might not be.  That said, the pattern was a pretty complex one.  After putting the cutting mat into the maker, it went to work and was beautiful to watch.  Since one of my drawings didn't scan as well as it should have I had a chance to test how the two techniques compared.  After watching the rotary blade make quick work of the pointy bits on Sugimoto's hair I had to sit down to trace and cut the final piece.  I ended up with Sharpie all over my hands and it took probably about the same amount of time from start to finish as getting the pattern into Design Space and cutting it with the Maker.  I can see vast potential for the whole "make a kit" idea with that - I could design the basic hair shapes and customers could choose which one they wanted to make, using their own Maker to precisely cut the design.

With the end of the term and coming up on Christmas break, I didn't get any further than that, but I had plenty of ideas.  Now that I'm back from the holidays, with a new iPad of my very own, and very little motivation to leave the house hopefully I'll start putting those ideas into action.  Stay tuned.

*Joke's on them, though - I'm never having kids!
**Most people pay big bucks for the kind of advice he gives me for free.  What can I say - it's one of the perks associated with the lease on my soul.