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Three pomegranate seeds in the Nether…land

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At first, I tried not to eat any bread or cheese. But then, just like Persephone, who did eat 3 pomegranate seeds in the netherworld, I ended up tasting an inviting piece of old Dutch farmer’s cheese at a party on a boat during a very slow, gorgeous sunset on a canal at 10PM, and a slice whole-grain bread with my favourite biological raspberry jam the day after. But hey, Persephone did manage to negotiate a system of or alternate attendance (sankinkōtai, 参勤交代 ) in upper and underworld —will I ever manage it?   But first things first. What aspect of Japan do I want to keep in my Dutch life? Let’s focus on one aspect. Plus, of course, I want to learn 5 kanji a day. And learn by heart all dialogues from the book Genki. And contact my Japanese teachers for lessons. And watch Japanese anime. And we will buy a rice-cooker… but this is not what I wanted to blog about! I want to cultivate a more Japanese relation to space. I would like my movements to express the b...
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Unfinished

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‘’You understand a place only when you have seen it in all seasons’’. That’s what  Miku   told us while teaching us how to dye with indigo in a tiny Tohoku mountain village .  Wanting to know the 4 seasons of  Minamisanriku,  she quit her job in Osaka and moved to this mountain place where she can enjoy a drink at night while watching the sea and the fireflies —after managing her indigo workshop, building a bed&breakfast and looking into other ways to revive this village, heavily hit by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011.  I am abandoning Sendai and Tohoku in the middle of its season-story.  Now, in the rainy season, we have just visited the cedar forest of Haguro-san- the mountain of the present, one of the Dewa Sanzan: the three sacred mountains in the Yamagata prefecture. It was just like stepping into a Miyazaki anime. I think it would be more than natural to wait for the hot summer, which apparently is one of the conditions to e...
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Encounters

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Hiraizumi As a young girl I tried to squeeze meaning out of a life that seemed peaceful, but empty and boring most of the time. I used to ask my grandmother to tell me stories about myself when I was even younger —a sheltered, uneventful, self-referential life. As a school kid I realized that one can paint meaning onto life: cartoons, history books, new stories. I could be not only Actarus longing for his life on Vega, but also Schliemann discovering Troy, Konrad Lorentz having new ducklings imprint on him. I am now looking at the Sendai skylight — out of the windows of room 507 of the International House Sanjo 2.  A lot of blinking red lights on high-rise buildings. Almost too much meaning to take in. Picture by Jeroen Where does meaning come from? I dare say from 'encounters'. Not only the ones with friends I will keep for life. Think of the cashier when you handover a 10.000 yen bill. If you give a 100 euro bill to a Dutch cashier, if they accept ...
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