bogachko

From the first of September Sweden will ban imports of incanescent lighting sources. The “warm” comforting light is doomed in this country as if it was too much sunshine to handle throughout the year. I honestly don’t know how I will live through the coming winter in the pale coldness of its cheaper substitute…

I had a couple of beers with real Asakusa style yakuza. I only realized that they were actual yakuza  (which they never confirmed though) when the younger guys dropped in and the older man started introducing them to me as his “family”. They were kind of a cheerful flock, a bit brutal in their humor, but with some distinct dignity about being able to decide about their own lives (another illusion, well). And I think I had sort of a flash back from one of the Takeshi Kitano movies as they looked almost exactly as his actors. When the older man learned that I lived in Sweden, he started laughting and saying something about “free love” (”free” for him actually meant “no cash”). What a dreamer…

This is one of few surviving true celebrations that offer its participants spiritual purification through a mild form of physical suffering. This suffering (carrying around on their shoulders  heavy Mikoshi-shrine) is all visible and audible. You can read it on each happy face of every volontier and hear it in their extatic singing that main purpose becomes to support their will to endure. It all tells you that this is not just a usual commercial emasculated fake, this is for real. All social differences are wipe out  among people carrying mikoshis. You wouldn’t tell a yakuza from a lawer. Neither would they remember it themselves.

http://bogachko.com/

Before going to an actual sumo competition I never realized how gratious and artistic and… swanlike this weird sort of martial art is.  I think that as a full reward for that unhuman transformation sumo fighters should be granted an exclusive right to date the Bolshoi’s ballerinas. I am sure that that day will come, but so far they have to put up with quiet white-faced geishas that come to see them stretching out in air their elefant legs, slapping each other on face, flying over each other’s hip and heavily hitting the ground . And they do all that obidiently and without complains - all just to please their silent madonnas.

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Being sick for a couple of days I took trouble to teach myself hiragana and katakana – both Japanese alphabets. I must admit I feel bloody damn proud of myself. Firstly because I didn’t give up to the sickness and watched TV all through, secondly because learning the alphabets (about 90 letters altogether) took me only two days and now I can walk around and actually read aloud all funky word I do not understand anyway (if it’s not kanji that is).  I am a bit afraid I’m falling in love with this language…

http://bogachko.com/

- There  there behind the bubbles on the bottom, look! 

These fishes are the last utmost delicacy to your satieted tongue and daring thrill to your heart. They are swimming slowly sending slow waves along their long soft bodies without even moving anywhere, because their only journey now is in time to the point when a sharp skillful knife will quickly and without hesitation cut their stomacks in the only correct samurai manner to free what can be freed from their temporary soul cages. Meanwhile, they keep swimming looking so touchingly weird with their flaming eyes, thick sensitive lips and poisonous livers.

http://bogachko.com/
 

http://bogachko.com/

And here I am back in Tokyo. The only thing that surprizes is how casual and even dull it all looks today.  I easily identify myself as a part of this  dreamlike scenary without even bothering or realizing how long time I haven’t been here.  Faces, faces… Taking portrets here in Japan is a pure and uncompromized euthoria. When you taste your first tuna bit and inevitably dig what crap you’ve been eating since the last pilgrimage here, you feel kind of sorry for yourself – more than for all the others, as now you know exactly how tuna should taste and you will have to carry this knowledge with you back home. Fortunately, each small Asahi sip effectively dissolves this spooky cloud of past-to-future concerns and you flow on with a funny conversation about traditional Japanese pickles and “rare sushi items” with a cool Japanese couple in a small sushi bar right across the street from your temporary nest for the coming two weeks.  They are truly cool. They laugh and teach you "magic" tricks with rubber bends twisting them around their fingers and unexpectedly releasing them and so on, they teach you some basic (well, complicated enough for me) Japanese phrases and scream with true joy when they hear you say it out loud to tthe chef, an old man in his 70s with a face full of "smily" wrinkles. He laughs too and everybody is just simply happy. Jsut happy. Such a nice magic trick.

http://bogachko.com/

Don’t stand on her way…


 

April 11 - Beijingers - 100/365