Wire star criticises UK TV drama

If you thought TVNZ's handling of The Wire was bad (the fifth and final series is finally screening here - at 12.25 in the morning!), spare a thought for UK TV viewers. The Wire is only just making its debut on terrestrial TV in the UK. We're talking season one here, which premiered in the US in 2002. To mark the occasion, Dominic West, who plays police officer Jimmy McNulty, criticises UK TV drama. The most shocking thing in the article is the revelation that West is a Brit. I had no idea.

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 129.4km
Days left until departure: 47

Nihonbashi

The stone version of the Nihonbashi bridge which is obscured by an ugly expressway today (there's a better picture of it here) was built in 1911. Before this a wooden bridge spanned the river in the same spot. It's this wooden bridge that features in the first print of the series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido. Hiroshige depicted the bridge numerous times over the course of his career. The snow scene above is from the series Miscellaneous Views of Edo.


There's a full-sized replica of the original Nihonbashi bridge inside the excellent Edo-Tokyo Museum, which is a must see for anyone interested in the history of Tokyo. Unfortunately they only had room to include half the bridge. Still, it's a truly impressive sight. And yes, you can walk over it.

Distance walked today: 3km
Distance walked yesterday: 4.1km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 126.4km
Days left until departure: 48

Return of the colossal squid

A colossal squid stamp! Details here.

Distance walked today: 10.1km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 119.3km
Days left until departure: 50

Normal transmission resuming

I hope you enjoyed those (at times politically incorrect) journeys back to the Japan of the swinging sixties. Well before my time, I hasten to add (my first trip to Japan wasn't until 1985). I found that guide at a secondhand book shop and thought it might be an interesting read. Most of it turned out to be pretty mundane. Nearly fifty years ago, tourists were going to pretty much the same places they go to today and seeing the same things; it just took them a little more time and effort to get there. Having said that, much of the modern transport infrastructure we see today (including the shinkansen, or "bullet trains", and the ugly elevated expressways that crisscross the nation's capital) was already in place by the mid-1960s, having been built as part of the rush to "modernize" Japan in time for the 1964 Olympics, which were seized on as an opportunity to show to the world just how much "progress" Japan had made since the war, just as the Seoul (1988) and Beijing (2008) Olympics were used by their respective host nations for their own political purposes.

Nihonbashi (below) and expressway (above)

Speaking of those ugly elevated expressways, there has been talk in recent years of burying them in an effort to "improve the urban environment." One section that has come under particular scrutiny is the section that runs over the top (yes, over the top) of Nihonbashi, the old bridge that marks the starting point (or finishing point if you start in Kyoto) of both the Nakasendo and the Tokaido. In 2006 a government panel came up with a proposal to bury this 2-km section and build a park and promenade near the bridge. However, the project has stalled mainly due to the cost, estimated at between 400 billion and 500 billion yen!

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 109.2km
Days left until departure: 51

Some extra-special $1 restaurants

What could be more unusual… than a place that serves nothing but sardines? That's the rare claim of Iwashi, which is to be found one block further west (i.e., nearer to the Palace) than Ginza, and one block further south (i.e., nearer to Shimbashi Station) than the Dentsu Building. The Sardine House, as is calls itself on its cards in English, is owned by Naito Naoshige, who offers sardines in 50 different ways, including sardine hamburgers, sardine soup, sardine curry, and pickled sardine stomachs (which taste like anchovies).
Naito, who doesn't speak English, is a big devotee of this humble fish. "I admire sardines. Seagulls, tuna, whales, dozens of creatures prey on them. Yet they survive; they keep right on multiplying." His clippings and books are filled with sardine sagas; how Hideyoshi filled the lunch boxes of his soldiers with sardines when they went to capture Korea…the poem Lady Murasaki composed for her husband when he scolded her for eating sardines. The walls are covered with paintings of sardines. Naito is a soft touch for sardine pictures, as many an artist knows.

From Japan and Hong Kong on Five Dollars a Day (1965-66 Edition)

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 106.2km
Days left until departure: 52

A whalemeat spot

During the war, in England, we all got used to eating whalemeat, so it didn’t come as any surprise to me to learn that Tokyo sports a whalemeat restaurant. The classic way to remove most of the fishy taste (if that's absolutely necessary to you) is to soak the meat/fish in vinegar for a while before frying with lots of onions. Then you can't tell that you're not eating beefsteak, unless you've been tipped off in advance.
At any rate, Tokyo's whalemeat restaurant is in Shibuya and is called the Kujiraya. It's very good and very cheap. As you walk out of Shibuya Station, turn left and cross the street to start walking up Dogenzaka. Take the first road that forks off diagonally to your right, and you'll find Kujiraya only a few yards up on your left. The name's in English outside, along with the words: "Whale cooked splendidly." There's also a glass case containing miniatures carved out of whalebone.

From Japan and Hong Kong on Five Dollars a Day (1965-66 Edition)

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 103.2km
Days left until departure: 53

Shinjuku's jazz coffee shops (cont.)

Most coffee shops close at 11 p.m. but the Village Gate stays open until 4 a.m., with coffee costing 200 yen after midnight. More informal than some of the others, with both an upstairs and downstairs, the Village Gate actually shelters some talkers as well as listeners and denotes a trend to take jazz without the same kind of reverence that exists in some of the earlier places. There's also a small food menu: roast beef sandwich, beef curry, toast or onigiri (a rice dish), each for 200 yen.
Village Gate has pretty chicks in polo sweaters, guys with their feet up, and others sprawled around. Also has big photomurals, including one of Jack Kennedy, in shorts and open knecked shirt sitting by an admiring Jackie beside the sea.

From Japan and Hong Kong on Five Dollars a Day (1965-66 Edition)

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 103.2km
Days left until departure: 55

Shinjuku's jazz coffee shops (cont.)

Young jazz fans take jazz very seriously in Shinjuku, and nowhere will you find more serious listeners than in the Dig Coffee Shop, its burlap-covered walls inscribed with penciled messages from jazz stars who have dropped in over the years. Magazine pictures line the walls of the stairway up to Dig, and inside the happy fans sit enraptured, mostly not even conversing, to the perpetual, driving beat of the heavy guns of jazz. "Which do you prefer, hot jazz or cool jazz?" a young Japanese college student asked me on one of my visits. Mostly in here, it's of the hot variety. To find Dig, walk along streetcar avenue until you reach the alleyway directly across the street from the gold beer glass sign. It's halfway up the alley on the left. About average coffee and drink prices - 100-250 yen.

From Japan and Hong Kong on Five Dollars a Day (1965-66 Edition)

Distance walked today: 10.1km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 103.2km
Days left until departure: 56

Landscape with Wading Bird

Distance walked today: 4.2km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 93.1km
Days left until departure: 57

Shinjuku's jazz coffee shops

Among the highlights of Shinjuku are its jazz coffee shops (jazzu kissa); and the fact that their jazz isn't live needn't worry you a bit. You'll never have heard recorded jazz like this before....

The biggest hi-fi jazz coffee shop in Shinjuku is the Mokuba, and it was while sitting there, eyeing the lovely girls, studying the bizarrely-curved ceiling, and listening to the over-loud jazz hammering in my ears, that I have had some of my profounder thoughts on jazz. Isn't jazz a reproduction in microcosm of an ideal society? A world in which all participants agree to stay within a minimal framework of rules, but allow unlimited personal variations within that framework? The Mokuba has very current jazz records, the latest acquisitions being listed on the wall with "Air Mail" written on them to denote recent arrival.

From Japan and Hong Kong on Five Dollars a Day (1965-66 Edition)

Walkin' the Tokaido

Whenever I'm in Tokyo, I make a point of checking out one or two jazz clubs. As I've intimated previously, my hometown of Christchurch is a bit of a jazz backwater. Tokyo, on the other hand, is a jazz Mecca. It must have one of the highest concentrations of jazz venues (clubs, bars, coffee shops, etc.) of any city in the world. And this interest in jazz isn’t just confined to the older generation. One of the most successful Japanese movies in recent years is Swing Girls, which is about a group of high school girls who form a big band. It even sparked a bit of a big band boom, the effects of which are still visible in the form of a number of venues in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan specializing in this form of jazz.

Not only does Japan have a thriving local jazz community, but it also attracts many great jazz artists from overseas. These artists love to play in Japan, and it's not just the prospect of earning good money that appeals to them. Although things have changed somewhat since the heady days of the sixties when Art Blakey, the first big foreign jazz artist to visit Japan, received the kind of reception usually reserved for rock stars in other countries, such artists still appreciate the respect with which they're treated in Japan. Keith Jarrett, who usually tours Japan at least once a year either for solo concerts or with his trio, is just one of the many overseas jazz artists who've expressed admiration for Japanese jazz audiences.

The history of jazz in Japan is something I haven’t really looked into in any detail. Several books have been written in English on the subject, and I intend reading a couple of them as soon as the New Zealand dollar recovers so that I can order them from Amazon without it costing me an arm and a leg.

This time I'll only have a couple of nights in Tokyo at the end of my walk, so I may not have the time or energy to see any live shows there. However, I've been doing some research into venues in some of the places I'll be stopping at along the Tokaido, and some of them look quite promising. I've found a couple of places in the cities where I have rest days scheduled (Nagoya and Shizuoka), for example. But I'm also looking forward to sampling what some of the smaller centres have to offer.

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 88.9km
Days left until departure: 59

Uncanny Resemblances Part 5: Colonel Sanders and Randy Bass

Another old hat story

Given its age (it's almost 25 years old), my Hanshin Tigers baseball cap is in remarkably good shape. I think it's made from some kind of indestructable synthetic material. Unfortunately it's so darn uncomfortable I hardly ever wear it, which is possibly another reason why it's in such good condition.

I bought it during my first trip to Japan in 1985. Those of you familiar with Japanese baseball history will know that this was the year the team from Osaka won the most coveted prize in Japanese baseball, the Japan Series. Despite living in an area dominated by fans of a rival team, the Hiroshima Carps (my host family even warned me that wearing it could get me in trouble), I went out and bought a Hanshin Tigers cap. Not that I was a big baseball fan or anything. Mainly it was because I liked the striking black and white pinstripe design.

Anyway, I continued wearing my hat thinking that the Hanshin Tigers were a strong team (such was my ignorance of Japanese baseball), when in fact they're widely regarded as a bunch of underachievers. That 1985 victory was their first in 21 years, and they haven’t repeated the feat since. Some people put this down to a curse. After that Japan Series win, a group of celebrating fans grabbed a Colonel Sanders statue from outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet (the Colonel was said to resemble the team's first baseman, Randy Bass, who is now a US State Senator, by the way) and threw it into Osaka's Dotonbori Canal. As a result of the team's poor performance since then, it was said that they were doomed never to repeat their series win until the Colonel was recovered from the river.

Well, good news! As is being reported around the world (the story even featured on a local New Zealand news website), the Colonel has been rescued from his watery grave after being discovered by divers checking for unexploded bombs from World War Two. Maybe I'll soon be able to wear my Hanshin Tigers cap with pride once again.

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 85.9km
Days left until departure: 61

Fond farewell to a faithful friend

Keiko's been going on at me lately about the state of my cap. No one wears the same cap for as long as I've worn my New York Yankees cap, she says. I must admit it is starting to show its age.

I bought it back in June 2001 at the end of our first and only trip to the United States. We were about to fly out of John F. Kennedy International Airport. I still had a few US dollars in my pocket and I was looking around for something to buy that would serve as a memento of our visit when I spotted it. I'm proud of the fact that it's the genuine article, not some cheap copy. It even has a label inside that says (although the words are difficult to make out now) "Genuine Merchandise", right above the label that says "Made in Macau".

Since then my Yankees cap has followed me around the world, to Australia and Japan, and to other more exotic locations like Bali, Java, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, and Cambodia. And of course it journeyed with me along the Nakasendo in 2007. It's been my number one backup hat, the hat I wear out in the evenings and at other times when style, not sun protection, is the primary consideration.

But reluctantly, I've decided I won’t be taking it with me when I walk the Tokaido. Instead my backup hat will be a black Nike jogging cap Keiko bought me last year. It's incredibly light and made from one of those fancy fabrics that wicks perspiration. I'm not sure what I'll do with my old Yankees cap. It'll probably end up in the box in the cupboard where I keep all my other old hats. There's a story behind each one. The Hanshin Tigers baseball cap, the brown wool trilby hat I bought in Florence. In fact I feel another series coming on….

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 82.9km
Days left until departure: 62

Evening Shower at Atake and the Great Bridge

Soon after arriving in Tokyo at the end of our Nakasendo walk in 2007, Erik and I visited the Ota Memorial Museum in Omotesando to see an exhibition of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. I was still pretty exhausted from our journey, and wasn't really in the mood for visiting art museums. However, I was so captivated by this print by Hiroshige from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo that I found myself going back to look at it several times.

For me, much of the appeal of ukiyo-e is romantic and relates to the way they depict scenes that no longer exist and capture the mood of a bygone age. But this print appealed to me for a different reason. When I first saw it it struck me as extremely modern. I decided this was largely due to the framing of the scene and the unusual angles of the bridge and the horizon. But I also love the colours, the representation of the rain, and the way the grey and black of the sky give a sense of an impending downpour.

Much has been written about the impact ukiyo-e had on European Impressionist painters in the latter half of the 19th century when Japanese prints began to flood into Europe (legend has it that they first found their way into that part of the world in the form of wrapping on ceramics and other goods, such was their lowly status in Japan at the time). One of these painters was Van Gogh. So impressed was he with the prints of Hiroshige and the other ukiyo-e artists that he copied some of them. You can see Van Gogh's version of Evening Shower at Atake and the Great Bridge here.

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 79.9km
Days left until departure: 63

Kanbara

Of the 55 prints that make up the series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido, those that depict the effects of the weather (such as rain, fog, wind and snow) are among the most evocative, and demonstrate most dramatically Hiroshige's skill as a woodblock print artist.

Kanbara is the most popular print in the series, and is regarded by many as Hiroshige's best work. This winter scene shows the mountains, trees, and buildings blanketed in snow. Yet the journey Hiroshige took along the Tokaido which inspired this series took place in summer. In other words, this scene is a product of Hiroshige's imagination. In fact, as Peggy and Denis Warner, authors of The Great Road: Japan's Highway to the Twentieth Century, point out, even in wintertime snow rarely falls at Kanbara.

Hiroshige often exaggerates the size or shape of natural features or even changes their location in his prints, but perhaps Kanbara is the most striking example of his application of that great prerogative of the artist, artistic licence.

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 79.9km
Days left until departure: 64

First impressions

In The Art of Fiction, David Lodge refers to the beginning of a novel as "a threshold, separating the real world we inhabit from the world the novelist has imagined". He goes on to describe how we usually read a novel slowly and hesitantly at first, as we unconsciously weigh up whether all the effort of absorbing and remembering the information presented to us (characters' names, their relationships, contextual details of time and place) is going to be worthwhile. "Most readers will give an author the benefit of the doubt for at least a few pages," he continues, "before deciding to back out over the threshold." Sometimes, however, the reader is "hooked" by the very first sentence.

One author who manages to "hook" me time and time again is William Boyd. He did this with the first sentence (save for the brief prologue) of Brazzaville Beach:

I never really warmed to Clovis - he was far too stupid to inspire real affection - but he always claimed a corner of my heart, largely, I supposed, because of the way he instinctively and unconsciously cupped his genitals whenever he was alarmed or nervous.

It makes more sense a paragraph or two later, when (and in saying this I'm not giving away anything that isn't discernible from the illustration on the front cover) it becomes clear that Clovis is a chimpanzee.

Boyd also had me hooked by the very first sentence of The Blue Afternoon:

I remember that afternoon, not long into our travels, sitting on deck in the mild mid-Atlantic sun on a slightly smirched and foggy day, the sky a pale washed-out blue above the smokestacks, that I asked my father what it felt like to pick up a knife and make an incision into living human flesh.

Compared to these, the first sentence of The New Confessions ("My first act on entering this world was to kill my mother") is positively stark, although the novel itself is more voluminous than the other two put together.

I was first introduced to William Boyd several years ago by Ultra 151, who recommended I read Any Human Heart. I enjoyed that book. However, Boyd didn't figure again in my life until a couple of Christmases ago, when I bought Restless as a present for my sister (and borrowed it to read as soon as she was finished). Since then I've been steadily working my way through his earlier novels, starting with The New Confessions, a hardback copy of which I picked up secondhand for just a few dollars. And as I mentioned the other day, I've recently bought The Blue Afternoon.

Incidentally, according to various (admittedly fairly old) rumours floating around the blogosphere, The Blue Afternoon is destined to be turned into a movie directed by Brian De Palma. Boyd wanted Daniel Craig to have a role (the two have been friends since they worked together on a movie called The Trench, which Boyd directed), but apparently the 007 actor, whom I first saw in the brilliant Our Friends in the North, is a bit busy these days.

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 79.9km
Days left until departure: 65

Revised Tokaido schedule

I've made a couple of changes to my original schedule for walking the Tokaido, mainly to even out the distances covered over the last two days. Also, I've successfully booked accommodation for all but three of the 30 nights I'll be away.

Day 1: Kyoto - Kusatsu (25.7)
Day 2: Kusatsu - Minakuchi (24.8)
Day 3: Minakuchi - Seki (27.4)
Day 4: Seki - Shono (15)
Day 5: Shono - Yokkaichi (15.4)
Day 6: Yokkaichi - Kuwana (15.9)
Day 7: Rest day in Nagoya
Day 8: Miya - Chiryu (19.8)
Day 9: Chiryu - Okazaki (12.1)
Day 10: Okazaki - Akasaka (20.9)
Day 11: Akasaka - Yoshida (13.7)
Day 12: Yoshida - Maisaka (28.8)
Day 13: Maisaka - Mitsuke (23.8)
Day 14: Mitsuke - Kakegawa (18.7)
Day 15: Kakegawa - Fujieda (27.8)
Day 16: Fujieda - Fuchu (22.8)
Day 17: Rest day in Shizuoka
Day 18: Fuchu - Okitsu (17)
Day 19: Okitsu - Yoshiwara (27.1)
Day 20: Yoshiwara - Mishima (21.9)
Day 21: Mishima - Hakone-Yumoto (23.7)
Day 22: Hakone-Yumoto - Oiso (24.5)
Day 23: Oiso - Totsuka (25.5)
Day 24: Totsuka - Kawasaki (23.3)
Day 25: Kawasaki - Nihonbashi (19.7)

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 76.9km
Days left until departure: 66

Uncanny Resemblances Part 4: The Colossal Squid and the Wellington Cable Car

(Note: Only works if you're colour blind and you squint really hard.)

Wellington trip report

Saturday

Keiko drops me off at Christchurch airport just before midday. As I go to check in, members of the Indian cricket team saunter past, fresh from their impressive batting display in Wellington on Friday, and on their way, as it would transpire, to an even more impressive display in Christchurch on Sunday. Half an hour later as I'm waiting to board my plane, I see the Black Caps arrive, looking rather bedraggled.

I love flying to Wellington. It only takes 45 minutes. No sooner has the plane reached cruising altitude than it begins its descent. Or so it seems. It's hardly worth getting out a book, let alone struggling to untangle iPod earphones.

In Wellington, I catch a shuttle to my hotel on The Terrace (which happens to be part of a chain sponsoring the Monet exhibition at Te Papa). It's past the check in time of 2pm, but my room isn’t ready, so I wander down to Willis Street and grab a late lunch (a curry) at a food court. Back on Willis Street, I pass Unity Books and decide to go in for a browse. It's not long before I find a book I've been looking out for for weeks, The China Lover by Ian Buruma. For good measure, I also buy a William Boyd novel, The Blue Afternoon.

I get back to my hotel just after 3pm and settle into my room. Then I remember there's a free big band concert on in Civic Square from 3.30pm, so I head out again, taking a different route down to Willis Street that takes me passed this piece of cone art. Or is it a cone prank? When I pass the same sculpture the following day the cone is gone, so I suspect the latter.

At Civic Square, I stay long enough to catch a couple of numbers by the New Zealand School of Music Big Band directed by Rodger Fox. But I don't like the idea of standing in the sun too long, and wander slowly back towards my hotel, stopping at a few outdoor clothing and book shops along the way. By the time I get back to The Terrace I realize there isn't much time before the first concert of the evening. Because I'm attending two shows in a row, I won't have time for dinner later on, so I start looking for a place to eat. None of the restaurants I check out have started serving dinner (it's only 5pm), so I make do with a large piece of quiche and a glass of wine in a bar just across the road from the concert venue inside the Town Hall.

First up is Tunisian "vocalist and oud virtuoso" Dhafer Youssef, whose backing band consists of a Polish pianist (Marcin Wasilewski), a Canadian bassist, and a Japanese drummer. He's a very engaging performer. He thanks us profusely in halting English a number of times, and also thanks the members of his band, the lighting director, and the soundman at least twice over the course of the show. The tunes are long, often rhythmically complex, but mostly based on simple riffs that are repeated over and over again. Youssef sits centre stage and plays his oud. Occasionally he wanders across to the side of the stage and watches the band perform. He seems to take great delight in Wasilewski's piano playing. During some of the tunes he sings. Or rather, he vocalises. There are no lyrics, but this is not scat, nor is it throat singing. It's more like the Muslim call to prayer set to music.

Youssef announces that the band is playing their final song, but that they'll come back for an encore. The last song ends and the band leave the stage, but despite the rapturous applause they fail to reappear. The house lights come on and there's an announcement. Due to the tight scheduling of events we have to leave the venue right away.

It's 7.15pm. The Tomasz Stańko Quartet is due on stage at 8pm. I walk up Cuba Street and find a nice coffee shop where I wolf down a slice of apple and blueberry pie with cream. I then walk back to the Town Hall and have a glass of red wine in the foyer before going back in to find my (new) seat.

I few weeks ago I was dismissive of the description of Tomasz Stańko as the "Polish Miles Davis." Now I know what people mean. Stańko's trumpet playing has the same clarity of tone, economy, and touches of vulnerability of Davis's. And like Davis, Stańko doesn't like to talk to his audience. He speaks only once the entire time, to introduce the band members. But I'm enthralled from start to finish. The music has all the qualities I hold dear. It's melodic, romantic (but not soppy), haunting (but not depressing), beautiful, moving. Pianist Marcin Wasilewski, playing in his second gig of the night, seems more at home in this all-Polish unit, who meld together perfectly. Before the concert I was a Stańko novice. By the end of it I'm a fan. Even if the rest of the weekend turns out to be a complete disaster, I'm satisfied because I've been to the best concert of my entire life.

Sunday

Sunday dawns calm and fine, one of those perfect Wellington days when the harbour shines. Unfortunately I have work to do, so aside from venturing out to buy breakfast, lunch and coffee, I'm confined to my hotel room until the evening.

At 6pm I meet a couple of friends for dinner, after which it's back to the Town Hall for the Brad Mehldau Trio concert. It's the biggest audience so far, but they're all milling around in the foyer because the doors to the hall are firmly shut. The start time of 8pm ticks passed and still there's no sign of them opening. There's no explanation as to what's happening, but I'd looked at Mehldau's website before coming to Wellington and noticed that he was due to play a concert in Melbourne the previous night, so I suspect he's arrived late and is still doing a sound check.

We're eventually let in and the concert starts around 15 minutes late. Brad Mehldau seems like a very nice man. He has a relaxed stage manner and talks often throughout the show. But his music doesn't do a lot for me. There are one or two nice moments. One is an extended, very classical-sounding solo, which is the only time during the concert that I think he sounds like Keith Jarrett. Perhaps if I'd had high expectations, or had come to Wellington especially to see Mehldau, I'd be disappointed, but I'm still on a high from hearing Tomasz Stańko play the night before.


Monday

Although the day starts out cold and wet, by mid-morning the rain has lifted and it's quite pleasant. I have a couple of hours to kill before I'm due to meet a friend for lunch, and decide to check out the Monet exhibition at Te Papa. When I get to the fourth floor, however, I'm greeted by a long queue and so decide to give Monet a miss. Instead I wander around looking at some of the museum exhibits. I come across a small gallery with some etchings. Among the mostly European works inside is a print by Hiroshige. It's Maisaka from The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido. Except something's wrong. It's a lot smaller than the Hiroshige prints I'm used to. Plus the composition is different from the print of Maisaka I'm familiar with. It's from a different edition of the series, called the Kyoka edition.

After walking around some more I come across this intriguing sign:

I find the colossal squid and start taking some photos, playing around with the different settings on my camera. I'm quite proud of the results.


I leave Te Papa and manage to squeeze in some more shopping (two Tomasz Stańko Quartet CDs, and Edmund White's The Flâneur, which I intend to take to read while walking the Tokaido) before lunch. After lunch there's just time for a coffee before heading back to the hotel to pick up my bag and catching a shuttle to the airport. I've done quite a bit of walking over the weekend. I have no idea how much distance I've covered. But my calves are quite sore. It must be from the hills.

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 76.9km
Days left until departure: 68

Mystery photo

I'll write a full report of my trip to Wellington later, but in the meantime here's a wee quiz. What is this?

Answers in the comments section please.

(Clue: It's found only in Wellington.)

Back on Monday

Theory of the Dérive

You may have noticed that the distances walked on the 20th of February and the 2nd of March were the same. That's because, apart from the last kilometre or two, the route I took into and back from town was the same. What's more, the route I followed in town - from the Bridge of Remembrance to Mondo for lunch and then on to Ticketek at the Town Hall - was also identical. The centre of Christchurch is not particularly interesting (it's completely flat and for the most part the streets run either north-south or east-west), but I'm often surprised at the number of times I find myself walking the exact same routes between the exact same places.

Back in July 2007 I noted how it's possible to find yourself in parts of your own city, a city that you may have lived in your entire life, that are completely unfamiliar to you. I commented how during a walk in North New Brighton Keiko and I "both felt as though we could have been in some completely different city, in some completely different country. Strange how you can live virtually your entire life in some place and still not really know it."

In his oft-quoted 1952 study Paris et l’agglomération parisienne, Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe plotted the movements made in the space of one year by a student living in the 16th Arrondissement to illustrate what he described as "the narrowness of the real Paris in which each individual lives . . . within a geographical area whose radius is extremely small". Most of the chosen student's movements fell within a small triangle, the three apexes of which were her school, her home, and the home of her piano teacher.

Writing in the inaugural issue of the journal Internationale Situationniste, Guy Debord expressed "outrage at the fact that anyone's life can be so pathetically limited". In his essay Theory of the Dérive, he outlined a technique for overcoming this.

One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive [literally: "drifting"], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.

As Debord himself makes clear, the dérive is different from the kind of carefree walking I referred to in yesterday's post, the benefits of which include offering "a vehicle for much-needed solitude and private thought". For a start, dérives are clearly politically motivated. But they are also best practiced in groups.

One can dérive alone, but all indications are that the most fruitful numerical arrangement consists of several small groups of two or three people who have reached the same level of awareness, since cross-checking these different groups' impressions makes it possible to arrive at more objective conclusions.

Interestingly, a colleague of Debord's compared the dérive to psychoanalysis. Ivan Chtcheglov also pointed out that the dérive brought with it similar risks to those of psychoanalysis. "Just as analysis unaccompanied with anything else is almost always contraindicated," he wrote, "so continual dériving is dangerous to the extent that the individual, having gone too far (not without bases, but...) without defenses, is threatened with explosion, dissolution, dissociation, disintegration." He suggested a week was a good average length for a dérive, adding, "In 1953-1954 we dérived for three or four months straight. That’s the extreme limit. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill us."

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 76.9km
Days left until departure: 72

Wanderlust

This excerpt from Amazon's review of the book Wanderlust: A History of Walking sums up nicely my own feelings about the benefits of traveling on foot:

Rebecca Solnit, a thoughtful writer and spirited walker, takes her readers on a leisurely journey through the prehistory, history, and natural history of bipedal motion. Walking, she observes, affords its practitioners an immediate reward - the ability to observe the world at a relaxed gait, one that allows us to take in sights, sounds, and smells that we might otherwise pass by. It provides a vehicle for much-needed solitude and private thought. For the health-minded, walking affords a low-impact and usually pleasant way of shedding a few pounds and stretching a few muscles. It is an essential part of the human adventure - and one that has, until now, been too little documented.

I've added this book to my Wish List. But I think I'll wait until the New Zealand dollar gains a bit against the greenback before buying it.

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 76.9km
Days left until departure: 73

How I used the walking map

Here's how I ended up using the Gokaido Walk walking map when I walked the Nakasendo in 2007.

The map came in a plastic case and was rolled up like this. When I unrolled it, it came apart in 13 sections, each representing around 40km. I took each section and folded it every 5.4cm, the equivalent of 1km in the real world. I then proceeded to weatherproof the map as follows:

Step 1: Prepare the folded walking map and a snap-lock bag.

Step 2: Remove one section of the walking map.

Step 3: Partly unfold the section to a length representing 4km.

Step 4: Carefully insert the map in the snap-lock bag.

Step 5: Fold and seal the snap-lock bag.

If I didn't need the map for a while (on a long stretch of straight road, for example), I simply slipped it into one of my trouser thigh pockets.

The only drawback to this method is that you have to refold the map every 4km. This can be tricky if it's raining, but I got it down to a fine art and managed to keep the map dry most of time. The secret is to put your hand into the bag and refold the map without exposing it the elements.

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 73.9km
Days left until departure: 74

Beyond Keith Jarrett

A part of someone's Keith Jarrett collection

I finally got my hands on a printed programme for the Wellington Jazz Festival while in town yesterday. Looking through it, I came across the name of Marcin Wasilewski, a Polish jazz pianist who features on both of the albums I have by French drummer Manu Katché. The first of these albums, Neighbourhood, also features Tomasz Stanko and one-time Keith Jarrett collaborator Jan Garbarek, which is what got me interested in Katché in the first place. Anyway, Wasilewski is appearing with Tunisian vocalist and oudist Dhafer Youssef on Saturday before the Tomasz Stanko concert. I decided I had to go to this as well, so I went into Ticketek and handed over another $55. That's three concerts I'm going to in Wellington this weekend, all at the same venue. If I'd booked them together I would have qualified for a 10% discount, plus I would have saved $12 in booking fees. Never mind. Incidentally, Wasilewski has played with Stanko a lot over the years, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up in the latter's quartet on the night.

Manu Katché is one of the artists I started listening to a few years ago after I decided that my fascination with Keith Jarrett was bordering on the unhealthy and that I should try to broaden my musical horizons. Having said that, I'd found a genre I really liked (understated, melodic, romantic piano jazz, for want of a better description), and I didn’t want to stray too far from that. So I started by checking out other musicians in this genre, as well as some of the pianists who'd influenced Keith Jarrett.

My first port of call was Bill Evans. Evans played piano and cowrote some of the music on Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, considered by many to be both the best-selling jazz album of all time and the greatest jazz album of all time. He later went on to revolutionize the piano trio concept. He did this by giving the bassist and drummer more active roles, resulting in more interplay among the musicians. Keiko had a copy of The Bill Evans Album, featuring Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums, so I started listening to this and grew to like it a lot. On some of the tracks Evans plays a Rhodes electric piano, then a relatively new instrument. For this reason some critics have dismissed the album as "gimmicky", but the music is great and it's still one of my favourite Bill Evans trio albums.

Among the collection of CDs my brother Mark left behind when he went overseas was a compilation of Bill Evans tracks called Quiet Now, which served as my introduction to Evans's non-trio recordings, including his solo work (including Conversations With Myself and Further Conversations With Myself, in which he used overdubbing to layer up to three tracks of piano on each song), and his duo work with guitarist Jim Hall. My own collection of Bill Evans CDs now numbers around ten. Last Christmas Mark gave me The Legendary Sessions CD, which includes Evans's two collaborative efforts with Tony Bennett, The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album and Together Again, listening to which has helped me overcome my aversion to jazz vocalists.

Other pianists who've been described as having influenced Keith Jarrett and whose music I listen to fairly regularly include Ahmad Jamal and McCoy Tyner. I never really got into Oscar Peterson. I've liked some of what I've heard of Bud Powell, and am interested in hearing more. The same goes for Thelonious Monk.

Some of the pianists I've enjoyed listening to over the years who've undoubtedly been influenced by Keith Jarrett are Tord Gustavsen, John Taylor, Bobo Stenson, and Eliane Elias, although I've pretty much lost interest in Gustavsen, whose playing sounds a bit monotonous to my ears, and the only work of Elias I've heard to date that I really like is on Shades of Jade, an album credited to bassist (and Elias's husband) Marc Johnson. Johnson, by the way, was once a member of the Bills Evans Trio. (Don’t you just love those connections?) Elias recently released an album of Bill Evans tunes, although I'm too scared to listen to it because she sings on some of the tracks. New Zealand pianists in my collection include Mike Nock and Alan Broadbent.

Since I'm going to a concert of his on Sunday evening, I should also mention Brad Mehldau. Mehldau is often compared to Keith Jarrett, although according to some Jarrett fans the similarities are overstated. I must admit I've heard very little of Mehldau. I have listened to a CD he made with guitarist Pat Metheny, but I've only heard snippets of his solo and trio work.

Last year I branched out further and started listening to quite a bit of jazz ensemble music, mostly of the genre known as hard bop. The catalyst for this was seeing a performance by a sextet led by saxophonist Oyama Hideo at Someday, a jazz club in Tokyo. The highlight of the evening was a performance of "This is for Albert" from the Art Blakey album Caravan. Back in New Zealand, I got hold of Caravan and also checked out some of Art Blakey's other work. I gradually built up a small collection of Jazz Messengers albums, mostly from the period in the 1960s when the group featured Freddie Hubbard on trumpet and Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone.

Blakey had a close affinity with Japan. He gave several of his sons Japanese first names. He was one of the first overseas jazz musicians to tour that country, an experience he later described as follows:

"When we hit Japan in 1960 or 61, I never saw anything like it. There were 7,000 heads going up and down at the same time and humming every note of everything we played… When we first went to Japan, they had Lee Morgan shirts, Wayne Shorter overcoats, all that kind of stuff in the department stores. The same kind of publicity the Beatles got in the U.S., we got in Japan, and plus. I think we're the only American artists that had an audience with the emperor. But this country never said a word about it, never a word."

Another classic hard-bop album I listen to a lot is Oliver Nelson's The Blues and the Abstract Truth.

I've always had a soft spot for John Coltrane, and have four or five of his albums, including the magnificent A Love Supreme. Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come is another jazz saxophone favourite. The title is a bit of a misnomer. Although he's regarded as a pioneer of free jazz, Coleman's playing on The Shape of Jazz to Come is very melodic and the music quite orthodox, especially compared to something like Coltrane's Olatunji Concert. I hope to add to my Ornette Coleman collection in the future.

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 73.9km
Days left until departure: 75

Negotiating Lake Hamana

Arai (from Hiroshige's The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido)

Like the section of the Tokaido between Miya and Kuwana I blogged about the other day, the 4km section between Maisaka and Arai at the southern edge of Lake Hamana was traversed by boat in the Edo period. If this wasn't enough to contend with, travelers also had to negotiate a checkpoint once they got to Arai. The punishment for men and women attempting to evade this barrier was death by crucifixion, or exile to Hachijo Island, an island so inaccessible it was known as "the island so far away that even the birds can't fly there".

This didn't stop some people trying to get through undetected. Some travelers who didn't want to be searched at Arai left the Tokaido before reaching the barrier and used minor roads to evade the checkpoint. This practice was especially popular among women, so much so that two of these minor roads became known as hime-kaido, or women's highways.

The geography of this area is interesting. Lake Hamana was originally a freshwater lake, separated from the ocean by a thin strip of land. However, a series of earthquakes and tsunami in the 15th and 16th centuries washed away this strip of land, opening Lake Hamana to the sea and transforming it into a brackish lake. By the Edo period the mouth of the lake had become so wide the only way to traverse it was by boat.


Today this channel is just 200m-wide and is spanned by a bridge, meaning it is again possible to walk this stretch just as it was before the Tokaido was established.

Distance walked today: 10.7km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 70.9km
Days left until departure: 76

Rhubarb run

I've just done an emergency dash to the supermarket to get some ice cream to go with the rhubarb Stephanie gave us the other day. Just as well. I don't like those zeros next to "distance walked today".

Distance walked today: 3km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 60.2km
Days left until departure: 77

Blogging while walking

One thing I've yet to decide is whether or not I'll update this blog while I'm actually walking the Tokaido, and if so how. When Erik and I walked the Nakasendo, I kept a written diary each day, but I didn’t update my blog until I got home. Quite often the hotels we stayed in had computers in the lobby from which we could access the Internet, and Erik used these to update his blog. But I was usually too tired to do this. Plus I like to take my time when writing blog entries and usually edit what I've written a number of times. Not something I want to do standing in a hotel lobby.

I notice Blogspot offers an option whereby you can update your blog via email. I'll have a mobile phone with an email function with me when I do the walk. So I suppose I could do some brief daily updates that way and write full entries after I get back. It's obviously a topic that needs more thought.

Distance walked today: 0km
Total distance walked since Tokaido training began: 57.2km
Days left until departure: 77