Monday Rabbit

We had an accident with our rabbits last week.

I was in the bath.  Shouting and screaming could be heard from the outside, calls for me to come.  to come quick.  Bit trouble with the rabbits.  being naked and in the bath I declined.

Sometimes it is better to not get involved.  Children and wives are far more capable than they may at first imagine.  It is good to let them find it.

The rabbits, one boy, Madara, and one girl, Daifuku, Dyfuku the result of an accident between our former rabbits, Piyunta (male) and Ell (female), Madara a Monday rabbit escaped from Ueno Zoo.

That Madara was a Monday rabbit is only my guess, but not without reason.  Monday Ueno Zoo is closed, so it is the day that they throw a couple of the adolescent rabbits that have outgrown the petting zoo into the cage with the Tigers.  tigers it seems get lethargic on a constant diet of dead meat and enjoy the sport of a Monday rabbit or two.

Madara was capture dazed and lonely on a Tuesday morning, by the police, just outside Ueno zoo.  They brought him to me as they knew I kept rabbits.  We found out later that he is a natural escaper, always finds or makes his way out.  All this leads me to the suspicion that he was a Monday rabbit.  For the bars and cage made for tigers keeps them well in.  But it is no match for a escaper rabbit, especial with the extra motivation of being chase by tigers.

But this is all very far from my Sunday night, quiet in the bath, loud in the garden emergency.

Bad M+M

I slept on an M+M again last night. 

The M+M, cleanest member of the chocolate family, designed for the US Defense Department for just that reason, to be shipped overseas during the Big One to melt in our boys' mouths and not in their hands, but a full night of the heat and pressure of being under me is of course too much even for the mighty M+M.  It finally gave way to the nature of its inner self and looks for all the world like a bullet hole when one wakes up in the morning having slept upon it, usually in the upper body or thorax region.

In the early morning confusion of just having woke from sleep, and perhaps a dream, to go to the toilet and find a bullet hole still sticky in one's mid section can cause quite a stir, I mean if you give way to the natural urge to scream in panic, "My god I’ve been shot!"

This kind of early morning outburst is good for no one - not the person clutching their side howling for emergency assistance, running in and out of other people's bedrooms, nor the family rudely woken from their own Sunday morning sleep by what seems to be a bullet shot man.

And that this was not the first time I have been tricked by an M+M.  You might think I would ready for the tricks of a melty M+M.  But no one is ready for such a thing at 5:30 in the morning.

So beware, for all the good it will do you.

Thanksgiving

Japan and America are very far away from each other, and with things like grammar and general thinking we seem to be backwards from each other, But both in November give thanksgiving.  Americans give thanks in a wider thanks for what is in front of me sort of a way.  In  Japan we give thanks for our children.  3-5-7, Three year old and seven year old girls, five year old boys - Thanks that they are alive and growing.

I went to my friend's shichi-go-san today.  It was a delight and a memory of my own kids at that age.

at the local jinga.

Another Sento Gone

I saw this sign posted next to the door of my favorite public bath - HatsunenoYu, the White Bath of Yanaka.

It says that the sento will be closed November 21st.

Public baths have been closing in Tokyo at the rate of 100 a year for 10 years now.  If the 7 withing walking distance of my studio 5 have closed since I came to Japan.

OK, for Americans it is probably an unbelievable pain in the ass to go out of the house, and walk 10 minutes down the road to take a bath.  America has been so rich for so long people pretty much forgot what communal feels like.  The culture was dieing out in most of Tokyo before I arrived, pack up your kit and walk down the street, meet your neighbors in the bath.  Kids playing, making noise, having fun with their friends, time for a little talk with neighbors, if you were feeling rich a bottle of soda, or juice, or even a beer when you were done.  Then back out in the rain, or cold, or like tonight - a beautiful new moon in a clear autumn sky, and walk home and go to bed.

There is a difference between luxury and convenience.  A unit bath in your own little cement shell apartment is convent .  A big old public bath steamy hot, a painted Fuji on the back wall, with neighbors, kids, enemies and friends is a great luxury that soon people will only be able to read about, those that still have the inclination to read.

This is the old sento closest to my old house, now turned into an art gallery.  I wonder what will happen to HatsunenoYu.

Painting again

My show is over, and it is good to be able to take down the walls and start to paint again.  While the exhibition was still going on I found myself thinking of some very thick and absorbent washi I had deep in my closest.

Today I started a tiny self portrait on the thick rough paper.  This is a cell phone photo of part of it along with a photo of the studio getting back into working shape.