confusion enough

it’s 926 pm in kamishiro, which is close to hakuba, up in what is colloquially referred to as “the japanese alps.” there’s not much here other than mountains. after the hubbub of tokyo (ilya has gone home), i decided to head up into the mountains for 4-5 days to hike and sit around.

it’s lovely here. i took a ski lift up the closest mountain today and went hiking. it was cloudy, so not much in the way of views, but a great hike nonetheless. i got somewhat frustrated coming back, as i always do, but managed. then i went shopping, and had an excellent organic pizza. it is pitch dark now, and i’m out on the balcony at this spacious and marvelously friendly hostel, typing away and listening to music.

even at meditation retreats, where there is nothing to do, there is still the notion of doing something, of being productive in some way. i go to retreats to progress in the art and practice of meditation. here, there is not even that. i’ve never been so free in my entire life. it is a fearsome freedom, total and striking. i have nothing at all to do. there is no demand on my time whatsoever. no one and nothing is familiar. i don’t have to do anything or even be anyone. every interaction i have with other people is brand new and completely undetermined. i find the possibilities of “self” branching endlessly.

somehow, with an unprecedented void of action or predefined personality, i am starting to see the outlines of my world as i create it, day by day. a strong truth is emerging. namely, that there really IS nothing to do and no one to be. i don’t know how to say it differently or clarify that statement. it’ll probably become clearer in the next bunch of months.

i head to beijing on the 25th. more pictures coming soon.

ilya and i have been having wacky adventures in tokyo. we have eaten widely, but i miss fresh vegetables. a lack of cabbage has wilted my spirits slightly, and i now insist that we eat breakfast from grocery stores. in the small town outside of fuji, this was a trivial task. in the simmering metropolis of tokyo, however, this presents a difficulty. finding a grocery store is not easy, but i continue my quest.

we’ve had some excellent conveyor belt sushi, with lots of fish i’ve never had before, all subtle and finely-textured. we’ve dined on okonomiyaki, high-priced, scrumptious grilled eel (unagi), chewy tender soba noodles, and yakisoba.

the last was had in a most amazing bar, recommended by jess mantell. for a 500 yen (~$5) cover and you can eat local snacks & candies, bundles of which are scattered all over the bar. as much as you want! we started chatting with some other bar patrons, and they told us all about the nostalgia of these snacks. they are the equivalent of the terrible yet irresistible halloween candies that we americans had as kids.

we ate gummies (cola, bear-shaped), a range of fish & squid jerky (one, in a package made to resemble money, was referred to as a “yenjamin” by our newfound friends), disgusting awful sour plum syrup, candy cigarettes, tiny donuts with an unexpected dense & chewy texture, tasteless fritos, improved funyuns, corn puff cylinders (flavors: curry, corn, chili, cheese, &c), chocolate covered wheat chaff, ordinary bagged popcorn, tiny apple-flavored sugar balls, a plastic mini-vat of pickled plums in syrup, and so forth. from the menu, we got a kind of japanese churro which apparently the elementary school kids ate every day. it was heartbreakingly delicious and fresh, obviously fried only seconds before. in general, the deserts here are much more delicious than in the u.s.

after the bar, jess took us to a premiere of the movie “tranny trash burgers,” a 30 minute homage to cross-dressing, fabulousness, japanese culture oddities, and non-narrative story telling. it was, in a word, fabulous. we drank beer and watched luminarious of the japanese party scene do what they do best in a small (everyplace here is small) underground event space.

the night before, we went to the party-neighborhood roppongi to watch an improvised solo performance of a terry riley-esque character named morgan fisher. the space he was playing at was exactly what you would expect. vegetarian food, overpriced beers, projected abstract art on the walls, dim lighting. in short, a classic avant-garde performance space. it is good to know that cool music is not too hard to find, even in a very foreign country.

when we left the show, hordes of african men with terribly-accented english tried to get us to go with them to “clubs.” after fighting off a few of them, i became frustrated and engaged one in conversation. his job was to convince me to suspend my ordinary morals, and this meant that he took on the role of a temporary sage. in this guru-role, he was obligated to answer any big questions that i put to him. when i finally got down to it, and asked “what is life REALLY about then?”, he hesitated for about 30 seconds and rambled about adventure and doing out of the ordinary things. we argued for another 5 minutes. he kept insisting that it was just a bar where we could have a beer. i made it clear that i would only go up to this “club” of his if there is no money involved, and he agreed.

ilya and i followed him. he took us into a random high-rise, and up to the 8th floor. in the elevator, there were two more african men, one of which was six and a half feet tall, and immensely wide. he was with a tiny japanese woman. there was friendly banter all around, but the guy’s vibe was cartoonishly that of a pimp. when the door opened we stepped out into a classic movie scene. bad techno, a few elevated platforms with provocative dancers, and a line-up of women dressed as garish geishas, all of them gorgeous, preening, smiling at us with smoky eyes. not a single bar-patron drinking a beer in sight. this being far from the description of the club our chaperone gave to us, i immediately told him “we are leaving now.” the women dropped the facades, resumed looking bored, and sat down heavily. it took another few minutes of repeating “we are leaving now” before he stopped trying to convince us to stay.

that’s it for now! for the weekend: more food, some temples, and flea markets. then, ilya leaves, and i am off to the japanese alps.

just came back from climbing fuji. ilya (who is here for a week) and i accidentally went up the wrong path, and got up about halfway. it rained viciously& horizontally the whole time. extreme winds drove water into every part of our bodies + minds. it turns out nothing that i think is waterproof actually is. my gortex boots became puddles, and my rain jacket was as wet on the outside as inside. despite all this, and the endless slog of switchbacks through furious clouds, we had lots of fun. not sure why, as i’m usually cranky in these situations!

we came to fuji from kyoto, where ilya and i were staying at kate’s house. we met kate through erik (another high school friend), and she is teaching english here. she has been kind enough to let us stay at her tiny apartment and show us around.

i don’t have too much to say about kyoto. the shopping district is dense and huge, even at 2pm on a monday. they have excellent men’s clothing here for very little money, and their 100 yen stores (aka dollar stores) put american ones to shame. there are beer vending machines, english signs of little sense everywhere, and eerily punctual public transport. everyone is polite and helpful. the streets are clean and there is no crime.

food is about what you’d expect. nothing too magical or outlandish yet. i’ve resumed eating fish as it would be impossible to eat otherwise.

the most fun was hanging out with kate. she took us out with her coworkers and students for a night of revelry (read: bar hopping and eating). they have all you can DRINK specials. this would never fly in the u.s., but in japan everyone is civilized and doesn’t pound dozens of shots. i believe out of everyone present, i got the drunkennest and proceeded to tell innocent japanese folk about hipsters & gangsters from the 30s.

ilya and i also went to see temples, but i wasn’t into it. they are huge and impressive of course, but empty. crowds of tourists are a turnoff.

before kyoto, i spent a week at a tekishinjuku, a zen temple outside of inukai, which is a tiny town outside of kameoka, which is a small city outside of kyoto. they ask for a donation of 3000 yen (~$30) per night, and provide three meals and lodging. the meals are simple, plentiful, and delicious.

the schedule at the temple looked like this:

450 – wakeup
515 – sutra chanting
600 – zazen (meditation)
645 – cleaning
700 – breakfast
free time (aka nap for me)
900 – 1.5 hrs of manual labor (usually pulling tiny omnipresent weeds)
free time
noon – lunch
free time
2pm – zazen
free time
4pm – sutra chanting
5pm – dinner
free time
7pm – zazen
8pm – sutra chanting
free time
10pm – bed

a much easier schedule than the vipassana meditation retreats i’ve done. sutra chanting is interesting. it ends up being a meditation in the sense that it requires total focus on your present activity (i.e. recitation) and breath control. we chanted so quickly that there was almost no time to breathe, and a beginner needs total focus to stay on track.

the manual labor is a kind of mediation as well. picking tiny weeds is a very useless activity. they are everywhere and come back in only days. the point of the activity isn’t to get rid of the weeds, but to cultivate an “only doing” state of mind which is at the base of zen.

which is not to say that there is no thinking. there were many books on zen in the library of the temple, and many of them emphasize this point. even in shikantaza (just sitting), which some consider to be the most “advanced” form of zen meditation, the mind is not free of thoughts. (note, there are technically no levels). you just see the thoughts starting, and watch them pass through “like clouds in the sky.” the point is to cultivate a choiceless awareness/mindfulness with no particular goal in mind. you are just sitting there and watching what is happening without participating in it.

this is much harder than it sounds. i found myself needing a goal (such as “pay attention to the breath”) to make meditation possible, and struggled with that. all of the literature makes it clear that zazen is supposed to be without a goal, or it is not proper zazen. however, having spent a week working at it, i think that having an initial goal such as focusing on the breath is a fine approach. it is akin to doing something so thoroughly that you forget you are doing it. when concentration is sufficiently well developed, the meditator forgets that he or she is paying attention to the breath and is JUST paying attention to the breath – which is precisely the state of proper zazen. i suspect that level of concentration will take me years to reach.

more on zen later!

so far all i’ve done is stumbled out of the airport after a 12 hour flight, boarded a train, checked into a hostel, and went to a fast food unagi joint. tomorrow, the famed tokyo fish market and freshest sushi in the solar system. after that, i’m heading to kyoto on the (expensive!) bullet train. the day after that i head to a zen monastery and will stay there sans-internet for 7 days. i emerge on the 11th.

there are more bike riders here than there are in seattle, percentagewise, but i haven’t seen a single road bike. cruisers are standard.

a good portion of the businessmen here have very slim suits. this makes me happy.

the train system is tangled and hard to understand.

the light is somehow different. it is nearer to halo-glow than american light.

i spent most of the airplane ride napping and listening to robert pirsig’s “zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” on book-on-tape. i have definitely read it before, but i have this weird power to completely forget books, so it was like encountering the ideas within the book for the first time. i like it, even though something about the tone puts me off. the listening sessions did give me some fun ideas to think about. here’s one that concerns machine learning from my notebook:

“problem definition and hypothesis generation are primary acts of human intelligence. modern machine learning does not concern itself with these acts.”

pirsig gave me the idea of thinking about machine learning’s utility in the scientific method. after all, science is our preferred way to learn, which is precisely what machine learning is about. here’s a naive model of the scientific method from wikipedia:

“1. Define the question
2. Gather information and resources (observe)
3. Form hypothesis
4. Perform experiment and collect data
5. Analyze data
6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
7. Publish results
8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)”

from what i know, machine learning has at least touched on data collection (active learning), data analysis (pretty much the definition of ML), and data interpretation (model selection does this in a limited way). question definition, directed information gathering, and hypothesis & conclusion formation are all outside of its scope. something to keep thinking about.

i’m flying into japan july 1st, then going to do a zen retreat until july 7th here: http://www.tekishin.org/english/index.htm

awesome!