son of soy » lotus

lotus, wedding, barong

Rick Elizaga — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 22:07:26 +0000

I’ve been absent from this blog for weeks at a time. Sorry!
I’m still alive over here. There’s a lot I could write about and a pile of photos I could post. Should I just let them go down the memory hole and move on, or start a series of sub-posts called “summer remembered?”

I didn’t mention it before, but Mari and I are getting married in November! That subject alone — the excitement, logistics, stresses, relationship ups and downs — could fill a whole blog. Marriage is such a huge thing… I’m trying not to be overwhelmed. It seems too big to blog about.

We’ve been engaged for several months, but there’s still plenty of planning to do. Some details:
The ceremony will be in Tokyo at a shinto shrine, Asakasa Hikawa-jinja, attended mainly by family and relatives — about 25-30 guests. Lunch afterwards. The following weekend, a party in Kyoto. Since Tokyo is quite far (and expensive) for most of my friends and relatives in the U.S., we’ll also have a party in the San Francisco Bay Area in spring 2006.

This week I need to finish our invitations for the Japan-side of things.
To complement the red, orange and yellow of November’s autumn leaves and to evoke feelings of spring and new growth, I’m thinking of making the main color a refreshing green?

The save-the-date announcement I designed a couple months back (left) has the look of an old-fashioned movie poster. For the new design I’d like to move towards Muji-like modern elegance.

Mari and I will wear kimonos to the ceremony. But to the lunch and various wedding celebrations in Tokyo, Kyoto and the U.S., I’ll go “back-to-roots” style and wear a barong tagalog, the traditional Filipino men’s formal garment. Usually made from cream-colored translucent pineapple fiber or jusi raw silk and covered in embroidery, barongs are cool and breezy. You wear them like long untucked shirts with black trousers and white undershirt.

My barong, ordered from mybarong.com, arrived yesterday. I ordered ready-to-wear instead of custom-tailored. It fits well, but the neck is a little tight for me — maybe I can move the top button a bit…
It seems ironic that, while I chose to wear a barong because it’s specificially Filipino, this particular one was “Made in China.” Fine, no problem, so was my great grandfather. Filipinos are all a little mixed.

Return of the fish

Rick Elizaga — Wed, 11 May 2005 00:16:24 +0000

In an update at the end of my last post, I wrote that the fish in our lotus pot were probably eaten by a bird. Well, the next day Mari and I bought some replacement fish — red-orange medaka at ten for ¥210 — and dropped them into the pot. One half of the pot is covered by lotus leaves, but the other is open to air and predators. We covered the exposed half with laundry bag netting to keep the birds out.

The small volume of water, now teeming with fish, was also turning green. I found an old yogurt cup, bailed out half of the water, then refreshed it. I watched the tiny red-orange medaka, who seemed happy with the clean-up, darting around in the pot. Then, to my surprise, I noticed four or five black ones! All the time I’d been lifting up the lotus pads and staring into the water, wondering where they’d gone or what had eaten them, they had been hiding there, camouflaged (and maybe exhausted?) by the dirty water.

Fifteen fish now swimming in that pot. I think they’ll be safe from birds without the ugly netting, but I worry a bit that they might be overcrowded.

Meanwhile, no lotus flowers yet.

Useful daily expressions: buying fish

Rick Elizaga — Sun, 08 May 2005 23:28:18 +0000

One month ago Kitaoka-san planted two lotus roots in a pot of soil and water at our front door. A few days later, Mari and I left town for about three weeks, leaving the task of watering to our helpful neighbor. We came back home to find healthy bright green pads growing from a dark soup redolent with the earthy-sewer smell of life. We also found tiny red wormy things squirming in the water — mosquito larvae, something Kitaoka-san had warned us about. Our little ecosystem needed balance.

Today’s mission: go to the pet store and buy medaka, small fish which would eat the mosquito larvae. We decided the errand would also be a good opportunity for me to practice my rudimentary Japanese. Over dinner last night, Shigeo-san dictated a script for me (language students take note):

めだかを　よんひき　ください。medaka o yonhiki kudasai.
にひきは　めす。nihiki wa mesu.
にひきは　おす。nihiki wa osu.
Four medaka please.
Two male.
Two female.

I’m reporting back on my blog, as assigned. きょうは　くろめだかを　ごひき　かった。Today I bought five black medaka. (Five was the minimum order.)

The shopkeeper expertly netted five medaka — how do you tell the males from females? — and tied them in a plastic bag for me. I hung them from my wrist as I pedaled my bike home, and I slipped them into the water. Each is a bit over 1″ long, and more grey than black. They seem to be enjoying themselves, darting around the water and swimming up to the edge of the pot to find food. A worrisome note, though: three separate times, I had to rescue fish that jumped out of the water into the flowerbed. The first time, I only noticed by chance the tiny escapee wiggling in the dirt. The second escape was almost as easy to miss. After checking on them a few times, I decided not to worry too much about it. If they’re going to jump out, what can you do? So I won’t be surprised tomorrow if there are fewer than five left.

Update:
Not more than 6 hours after I brought the fish home, they’re all gone. I think a bird ate them? Or they buried themselves? There is not much room to hide in that pot, and I don’t see anything moving nor any dead fish bodies.