Hey Rocket, this one is about when I visited Kanazawa... Japan, Part Two

Here is a second instalment of my adventure in Japan!

I am not as talented a photographer as Michelle (make sure you check her blog, she might have posted some new photos..!)

(Or not, and I am just teasing)

However, let me tell you about when I visited Kanazawa.

Kanazawa is known for its gold leaf - and it is on everything! Icecream, in my tea, painted onto buildings, jewellery, iPhone cases.... But it was a beautiful place beyond all the gilding, straight out of a japanese legend.

It started with the Botanic Gardens, (partly covered in Japan, Part One), then I crossed the road to visit the Kanazawa Castle. It was inhabited by a Shogun, and a whole bunch of samurai during the Edo period. The steps were all uneven in case they were attacked - to trip up the enemy samurai who were unfamiliar with the castle. The castle tower was built in a diamond shape. 300 years ago, when all they used were interlocking bits of wood, they created a perfect, 3-level tower with corners at 100 and 80 degrees! (And it was recreated more recently as the original had burnt down).

100 degree corner! The tower was a perfect diamond! Mind = blown.

Lets see  you run up/down these stairs first time, without tripping, while defending samurai threw rocks at you...

Mr Noburo Orito telling us about how this castle was prosperous for 350 years during the Edo Period. He is gesturing to the wife of Maeda Toshiie, who volunteered to live in Tokyo as a hostage to help keep things peaceful between the ruling power, and the great city that was Kanazawa!

Botanic medical garden - Kanazawa castle was briefly used as a university. Here, Mr Noburo told us about the use of bamboo to preserve rice. The rice can be wrapped in bamboo leaf, which in combination with vinegar used in cooking the rice, helps keep it delicious for longer. When an earlier visitor asked Mr Noburo if he ate the bamboo as well as the rice, his response, "Panda eat bamboo. I am not panda".

My friend and I were given a personal tour, in english, by Mr. Noboru Orito. He was incredibly knowledgeable about Kanazawa, and had a soft spot for New Zealand and Kiwis.

Kanazawa Castle, seen from near the storage building where weapons were kept.

After visiting the castle, I went on to see the Museum of Gold Leaf and the geisha district. Kanazawa was incredible, the streets narrow, with new temples, shrines and interesting food in windows to see around every corner. I felt like a giant, white stranger a lot of the time (which I guess I was), in a city that was a mix of traditional and modern buildings, that smelt of river water and traffic, sounded like bicycle bells ringing and people moving, with an ice cream that tasted delicious and creamy, despite being dusted with gold flakes!

Next up: Kyoto. Where I didnt get lost, but I communicated with deer.

Creative Non Fiction

On the weekend, I attended a workshop given by Rae Roadley. She is the author of "Love at the end of the road", which refers to a house down at Batley on the Kaipara Harbour (you can see it from Otamatea marae). It was part of the NorthWrite Conference/workshop series run in part by the New Zealand Society of Authors
NorthWrite Website

Before I went, I had no idea what 'creative non fiction' was, and even since I am not totally sure... I can say that it is a merging of fact and fiction, where facts become friendly to the reader.

Now, since having written a PhD thesis, I found this thought slightly bemusing - facts cant become friendly, they are simply facts. You put them all together, use them as evidence, back up your arguments - there is nothing creative as such about that!

But we did an exercise, where the instructions were to imagine a place/building/outdoor space that is important or special to you. Describe the physical aspects, history, why I like/dislike it and so on. Then put yourself in that space, and write 1 - 2 paragraphs about emotions it evokes, how you feel about it and why, plus some facts (eg age, colour, etc). I found this exercise fascinating - first, because it was not after seriously researching some aspect of flower colour. Second, because the facts simply 'fit' in after some emotional creations!

Here is my short paragraph:

As I walked up the edge of the small, rocky beach onto the narrow neck that connects Bicayahuken to the mainland, the late afternoon angle of the sun hit me right in the face. A glacier, shining blue-white was edging down into the bay. The bay itself looked like something from the east coast of New Zealand. I felt like an early explorer, on my own heroic adventure despite being part of a student group. Biscayahuken is a small point of land in the north of Spitsbergen. It is named after the Biscay Whalers that were present in Svalbard during the 17th and 18th Centuries and has experienced human inhabitation. There were few remnants of human occupation these days. The rocky outline of a small hut with permafrost-churned grave sites nearby. Maybe they died from illness, perhaps old age. Noone in the group knew, and that seemed a poor legacy to have left behind. Rusted nails, broken glass and odd pieces of wire and such were strewn about, in between the small clumps of Saxifraga caespitosa. I could see that nature was simply going on, as it had done even when the occupants of the graves had been standing where I was.

Hut remnants at Biscayahuken, 2010

Thats as far as I got in the last half hour of the workshop. Interesting process, and definitely something I shall pursue! Rae Roadley was very adamant that one should be a kind narrator.

The view of the glacier

Some things are best left unsaid, and one persons recollection of a 'fact' may well be very different from anothers! The one saying of note that struck me was this, in the words of Micheal King (perhaps similar to W.B. Yeats?):
                                                 "Tread softly for you tread on my life"

Saxifraga cespitosa

One Year To The Day

Just last week on the 7th March 2014 it was exactly one year to the day since I last stood in Svalbard.

The day after, 8th March 2014, I was a guest at my first wedding at Otamatea Marae (my ancestral marae, I have relatives buried in the cemetery!).

The wedding was excellent, good food, some dancing, and plenty of wonderful stories and traditions. But after being out under the hot, burny sun for an afternoon - which I enjoyed, dont get me wrong, my jandal tanline is under improvement - I was reminded of this time last year, when the sun that I had seen definitely had not felt at all warm, but was welcome none the less.

I spent something like 72 days without seeing the sun. It made me realise that our bodies are certainly linked in some way to sunrises and sunsets, the circadian rhythm running through our lives. But I dont want this post to be too reflective... Despite the sunshine reflecting off the ocean just outside, the cicadas singing their hearts out, and the smell of warm soil and plants growing...

This is going to be the story about my trip to see the sun return. I have blogged about this earlier (see Trip to See the Sun Shine)

To see the sun return in Svalbard, it requires hiking up a mountain, Trollstein (so named due to the large rock sitting atop it, kind of like a troll) on a particular day in February. I was to ski up, on borrowed cross country skis. Now, I was certainly still a beginner skier. I still am. It doesnt come naturally to me at all (Perhaps because my ancestors all kept their feet firmly planted either on the ground or deck of their wakas/ships).

The top of the mountain is in sight, with foggy cloud approaching...

But I made it most of the way, on my skis, without falling over. I took them off when I was close to the top as they started sliding backwards, and I didnt want to be skiing backwards down this mountainside!! Remember, I can barely ski forwards...

Taking them off and walking the last bit was great. Most of the town were also heading up the mountain to see the sun peek over the distant horizon and it was quite a communal occasion. At the top however, it was cold. Bitterly cold, that seeped through my gloves and I had to keep jumping about to keep warm! Further, it was cloudy.

That should have been a bit of a let down, getting to the top and seeing nought but clouds, but it wasnt. I had climbed a mountain (mostly in skis), which is certainly an achievement. And walking down, seeing the moody grey colour of the fjord surrounded by white snow, that was certainly something.

The view down Longyeardalen on the way back to town

This story doesnt have such a happy ending, no skiing off into the sunset or anything like that. I ended up incredibly sick with the flu, two days after, and spent my final two weeks either in bed, or trying to write my PhD.

However, it has meant that on a day such as this, with the sun beating down and vitamin D coursing through my veins, my PhD written and submitted, no skis in sight, I feel invincible!!

As for Writing Boot Camp though.... Eep I fell off the wagon! Ah well, better climb back on...

Being Concise

Lesson #3. Be concise. Make every word tell. Make your point well and once. Then Shut Up.

Okay, writing boot camp is getting hard. I would say I have ‘hit the wall’ like they do in marathons, but its only my third day so I cant have hit the wall. Yet. I want to write about that feeling at a later date, so cannot have it too soon! Today the lesson is about being concise. The first draft of this piece was not very concise. The second draft was a bit better. The third going over though, that really narrowed it down. However it meant that I had to write MUCH more than the 250/250 words each time! 

This task was quite difficult. One: I am very chatty, and no one can tell me to be quiet while I type (Actually I often get told to not hit the key board so hard. Cant they see I am furiously trying to concisely share my points!!). Two: I am not sure what point I am trying to get across.

And this is not ideal when trying to be concise.

Is there a better way to write that I wonder…

This is not ideal when being concise.

There, that took it from ten words to seven! Right now, I am not convinced that this post is going to meet the Lesson #3 objective however, as I am yet to come round to making a good point. How about this: Sometimes, writing is hard.

You write what you read - Boot Camp Day 2

Lesson #2 of writing boot camp states that "You become a better writer by reading. You become a better reader by writing" (http://ajjuliani.com/10-lessons-improve-your-writing/).

I was once told that what you read tells something about yourself. If anyone was to check through my library lending history they would be confused as to what was going on! Since handing in my thesis, I have been gorging on books. Books of all sorts! Particularly books on how to grow gardens, improve soil structure, companion planting, and no-dig gardens. But not only that - fantasy fiction. I am endeavouring to catch up on the latest popular stories, Game of Thrones, Divergent, and so on.

I find a real joy in reading. During my thesis I was very much not in the habit of reading though - all my efforts went into reading published scientific papers about flower colour, plant reproduction and floral pigments. But since handing in, there is this real freedom to read whatever I want! I have been reading classics (Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence at the moment), various romance novels, fictional novels and lastly, cook books.

Oh how I love to read cook books!! The current cook book is "The Art of French Cooking" by Ginette Mathiot. And looking at the pictures, dreaming about making my very own brioche and petit fours is enough to entertain me for an entire afternoon! I was surprised actually, as the techniques that are explained in the beginning of the book are reasonably straight forward - French cooking so far seems to be just a series of steps, like all other cooking. And the end result looks so beautiful! (in the pictures of course, I havent tried any of the recipes yet). Next on the pile is 'A Taste of Persia'.

Im not sure how reading cook books will impact positively (or otherwise) upon my writing style. I do enjoy them regardless, and anyway, all reading must have some beneficial effects. Even if it shows what 'not to do'. Right?? Classic novels must be part of a good reading diet, however and the local library has a section of them so you know what they are.

Thinking of Classics, I found my copy of Wuthering Heights yesterday when I was unpacking some books. I have read it many times, but I enjoy it every time I turn the page! Something about the tortured love between Catherine and Heathcliff, out on the moors of old England... The Bronte sisters are excellent for moody, pained love that inspires thoughts of grey-purple, brooding romances. Love it. Lady Chatterly's Lover was quite different, likely due to being composed during quite a different time in societal history. I am definitely a fan of romance, but it took some time to understand what was meant by 'pressing up against each other till they reached a crisis'. Perhaps due to my upbringing in a different time of history and language, I read 'crisis' as something going quite wrong...


Now, boot camp states that I should be writing 250 words morning and evening, every day for ten days. I wonder if writing 500 words all at once is considered good form, or cheating the habit... 

Writing in my own style

Today I came across this blog thanks to the Thesis Whisperer (http://thesiswhisperer.com/)

http://ajjuliani.com/10-lessons-improve-your-writing/

And when I got to Lesson #6, I realised that one's own unique writing style comes about through practice. So, I have decided to begin my own 'Writer's Boot Camp'. I have often toyed with the idea of being a writer, thanks to the enjoyment I received from reading my own creative stories written in high school. But in the real world, writing requires a LOT of dedication (I should have realised this before flippantly beginning my PhD journey) and Step One of the 'Writer's Boot Camp' involves writing 250 words, morning and night, every day for ten days.

Right now, including those links I am at 112 words. And I am stuck already!! I am dying to check Facebook (the time thief), write an email (I havent written it thus far, why the need now??), and make sure I am up to date on all current events (in truth, I want to do the daily NZ Herald Quiz). I know that what I really should be doing is looking at the first draft of a scientific paper I want to publish in Polar Biology... But its a Saturday and I did work on it last night... Maybe one more look at those images, then I wont be torturing myself by writing words...

Lets face it, after three and a half years of 'writing' my thesis, I know all the tricks to avoid putting pen to paper! Or, in this day and age, fingers to keyboard.

There. I made it. That wasnt so hard...