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.

Dear Rocket, A story about Japan... Part One: Plants

Rocket, you know I travelled to Japan to attend Arctic Science Summit Week, 21 - 30th April, 2015.

I ventured out into the countryside, a kiwi keen to learn more about various Shogun and Emperors, while sampling the local food that left me feeling stuffed - and nervous about what a whole firefly squid might do in my belly!

(Lets be real, I know it will be digested, but eating it whole was certainly an experience....)

Koi carp were common in the ponds and water features - it was striking to see them contemplated so quietly, while here in NZ, they are a massive pest!

Koi carp in Toyama Castle park. Came up to say hello and nibble my fingers!

Then all of the other carp arrived, things got a bit messy... I removed my fingers from the water, and left smelling of fishy pond water

The conference was extremely interesting, but on my day off, I found something which delighted this botanist's senses... The Tonami Tulip Fair! The Dutch probably wouldnt be impressed, but I found it so colourful, it smelt like hot summery days and looked like a vibrant rainbow!

I spent a few moments watching the cherry blossoms sway in the warm breeze!

The Sakura, or Cherry Blossoms, were blooming at their best in Toyama before I arrived, I managed to catch these in a shady spot of the tulip fair! The Sakura 'front' moves from south to north in the Spring - then in Autumn, the Autumn leaf 'front' moves back down the country from north to south.

In the Botanic Gardens in Kanazawa, I saw trees, with all their branches propped up! Turns out, when it snows in Winter, the boughs of the trees can snap under the weight of all the flakes of frozen water. Using poles to hold them up = problem solved! Long-lived trees with fascinating scaffolding.

Superb Sunsets

I was reminded of the sun the other day. Which may sound strange - but it struck me that, in the words of Pumbaa from the Lion King; its a ball of gas burning billions of miles away.

So I looked up some sun facts (makes a change from ice, right!), and here goes. Actually, it was relevant to thesis amendments - the sun shines wavelengths of light down upon the earth, the petals on the flowers reflect the wavelengths into the centre of the flower, and all the sexy stuff happens quickly and efficiently, just as it should. I believe there is a bit more detail here and there, but that is the gist of it all. Thesis in a nutshell!!

Back to the sun. The sun is almost perfectly spherical according to some sources - my own observations at sunset are in keeping with this. Light from this ball of burning gas (mostly hydrogen if www.sciencekids.co.nz is correct) reaches the earth in approximately 8 minutes.

Spherical ball of burning gas at the center of our solar system

The sun produces 'solar winds' which contains charged particles - and don't quote me on this, but I believe that these particles have some role to play in the Aurora... Because whenever there is a solar storm, the aurora is far more active than when there isnt a storm.

The Midnight Sun has been a common feature in my polar endeavours. One night I hiked up to the Plateau above Longyearbyen in Svalbard, and watched the sun sink down, and down, until it brushed across the tops of the jagged mountains across the fjord... before rising again to take its place in the sky! This was the final circuit around the sky without setting for that season - 22 August.

Last of the Midnight Sun in Longyearbyen

The sun is same at the other end of the world (same sun so it makes sense). A memorable sunset on Campbell Island occurred around 2230 hrs, with a skua gliding around my head checking out what these crazy botanists were doing out at that time of night. All sorts of moths were flitting about, and after having read numerous accounts of shipwreck survivors being 'seen' wandering the peat bogs... It was eerie, the wind had dropped and the skua was hovering about and it would have been the perfect moment for a historical ghost to spring out of the Dracophyllym and shout "Yah!!".

Needless to say, there was no ghost. Just the sun quietly sinking below the horizon.

Over 26 different types of Ice...

And I fondly remember carving penguins out of packed snow/ice in the Antarctic.

"Sleepy Penguin"(by yours truly) with ice shot glass (that was made by a friend)

My first ice carving experiment was actually in Christchurch before we left for the Antarctic. It was in a workshop, with a very talented man, with a lot of big tubs full of ice.



He shared some basic techniques, and I got pretty damn excited about it all - especially the idea of a vodka luge (more on that later). I went to Mitre10 and got myself a serrated knife, packed it carefully into my bag and waited to head south.




The most interesting thing I came across when considering carving things out of ice was that in this amazing, hyperbole-filled place, I had no ideas of anything to create. Nothing. No inspiration at all. I had seen loads of 'polar inspired' artwork, but down on the ice, nothing was jumping to my mind! Perhaps it was that it was a scientific expedition, but I think it was the absence of everything - look to the right, great nothingness of white snow-covered ice until the horizon where it turned into blank blue sky. To the left, Mt Erebus just puffing quietly away. No sense of scale, or distance.

But, the first chunks of hard-packed snow that came out of our hand-dug snow pit looked promising. The first chunk I got stuck into with my knife seemed to suggest 'Penguin'. The slope of the head and the back arose quite quickly, then it was straight-forward to shape out a head, beak and wings. Shaping the block sounded like polystyrene being cut, my gloves got soaked from firmly stroking the penguin to get just the right shape. My bum went a bit numb from sitting. I put a piece that I cut off in my mouth, it was crunchy and cold!

And after a short hour or so of concentrated effort, I had a sleepy looking penguin for my troubles. He went on to adorn our kitchen area, and was joined by two others ( I tried to do different species, but it was not easily idenitfied).

Supposedly Emperor Penguin next in line after the sleepy one (Photo Chris Dolder)

Macaroni Penguin, Sleepy and Emperor (Photo Chris Dolder)

Watching them melt was fascinating, as they were carved at different times, I had used blocks of hard snow/ice from different snow pit layers:

Remnant Macaroni Penguin with three distinct ice layers

After three penguins, I was tired of making them. I wanted to carve still and searching for inspiration, ended up with the shape of my pounamu that I was wearing at the time. I carved it in 3D and shaped it out of a snow layer with ice behind it.

Koru, symbol of new growth and renewal (Photo Shannon Fowler)

Koru on ice

I find ice and the shapes it creates fascinating - just like with snowflakes.

Over 26 different types of Ice...

But snowflakes are my favourite!

I love snow. Watching it fall, softly hushing on the ground. Getting big, fat fluffs of it in my face, stuck in my hat and melting wetly down neck! But my absolute favourite thing is seeing snowflakes gently whisking through the air, spiraling around and down to join the messy clusters on the ground.

Snowflake photos by Kenneth G. Libbrecht

I am not sure quite what it is that I find so wonderful about them. The symmetry perhaps, or the notion that every snowflake is unique. Maybe its that they just fall, quietly out of the sky, sparkling and perfectly beautiful.

I first saw snowflakes during a reindeer hunting expedition. It was cold, it was light, it was the middle of the night - and there were loads of these fantastic shapes sprinkled all over my jacket and backpack. And here was I thinking this kind of thing only happened in the movies!!

Snowflakes on my jacket (excellent jacket from EarthSeaSky)

Now, according to this handy snowflake guide (Snowflake Guide), the snowflakes on my jacket belong to the type known as 'Stellar Dendrites' and 'Fern-like Stellar Dendrites'. There are even places  where, just like you can go to watch birds, you can visit to watch and observe snowflakes. I spent a lot of time watching them during winter in Svalbard, just outside the UNIS building in Longyearbyen. The lights were up high, and lit up the snowflakes as they fell and there was no wind, just snowflakes falling all around.

Snowflakes are made up of ice, which forms when water vapour freezes. A frozen vapour-droplet then develops the shape of the snowflake but this seems to be a pretty complicated process, involving a lot of physics. At the most simplest, different shapes form depending on air temperature, and the amount of vapour and the shape of the original frozen droplet.

If any science were 'magical' it would be the physics and principles that guide the formation of snowflakes. Disney's 'Frozen' movie certainly calls it magic and sorcery, but perhaps Elsa is simply a physicist in another form.

Creative Non Fiction - #2

Since attending this creative non fiction workshop (see previous post), I have realised that my natural tendency in writing my PhD, was in fact creative non fiction. I wanted to add in little bits about my personal experience, sprinkle anecdotes through, so as to make something readable to everyone.

But lets face it, not everyone is going to want to read about how many poppy seeds I manually counted in 2010 (it was over 22 thousand by the way), the changes in experimental protocol in order to improve collected data, or the justification of use of particular statistical models....

Already I feel myself slipping into the 'science speak'!!

So today's challenge was to take an aspect of my thesis (for example, insect visitation) and to write it in a creative, non fiction form.

Selection of insects in Dryas octopetala flower

Endalen is the warmest valley in the Adventdalen group - likely due to the lack of glacier at the head of the valley in my opinion. I spent many days there, not only basking in the sunshine on the warm tundra, but watching for insects visiting flowers. I observed them (with help of course!) not only basking in the sunshine, but feeding, walking and flying. There are many flowering, thermophilic plants in Endalen, including the 'tallest' tree; a Betula nana specimen that if it were supported vertically would be nearly a meter in height. Endalen is also home to many flying insects. I say flying insects, because these are the most likely to be visiting flowers.

Flying insects can exert a selective pressure upon the floral species they are visiting. If you were a bumblebee who hated the bland, boring view of white flowers, especially in comparison to a deep, welcoming blue, you would visit the blue flower rather than the white. If you continued to do this, time after time, season after season, only the blue flowers would be selected for within the floral population - after a few years you may not have to worry about the awfully plain white flowers coming into your bumblebee field of vision as that colour would have been discontinued!

In Endalen, there is a fly that seems to love the creamy petals and fluffy yellow center of Dryas octopetala. This fly is of the Rhamphomyidae family, and is commonly known as the 'Dancing Fly'. The dancing is in reference to the mating actions of the males, who 'dance' around the females attempting to impregnate her (much like that of the dance floor on a Friday night in some establishments!). I observed many of these flies hanging out in Dryas flowers - basking, feeding, walking and, if I got too close or disturbed them, flying away across the tundra. I always wondered how the flies saw the tundra. Did the patches of creamy, pale Dryas flowers stand out like giant dinner platters? Maybe one day I shall find out...

'Dancing Fly' in Dryas octopetala outside UNIS building in Longyearbyen

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