Relativity theory

The other day I started thinking of styles. I just moved into a new apartment, and I want to build a home that looks like me. I am going for something Asian; Japanese or Chinese. It's a bit strange how I've completely changed styles, as I was a pro-Finnish functionalism a few years ago. Now, I couldn't imagine living in an aparment that was filled with functionalism.

Aalto stools; iconic Finnish design.

Alternative uses of space and light in a book store.

It is interesting how the "traditional" Finnish interior dates only to the 1950's or something. After the war. In interior design magazines the iconic Finnish interior, or rather, the iconic Scandinavian interior, is the post-war functionalism.

In Japan, the iconic architecture and style dates back to what, 1000 and more years ago. Tea rooms, tatami mats, ikebana, natural minimalism have been the elements of Japanese life for centuries. 

 

Tatami mats and natural materials in a traditional Japanese home.

There are castles and temples that have been there for thousands of years. The temples were built out of wood, and they have been carefully maintained so that people can visit them and feel a touch of the eternal.

Tôdaiji temple in Nara, originally built in 700's but rebuilt in 1700.

No one even lived in Finland 1000 years ago. And if they did, they lived in small huts or in caves. Probably. 

The oldest buildings in Finland are not that old; maybe from the 1600's. Not counting in the medieval castles, though, of which there are still 3 left. Despite wood being our most valuable natural resource, there are no really old historical wooden buildings left. The Petäjävesi church is from 1700's. Go past that, and there's nothing.

Everything is relative, and Finnish culture, and the Finnish identity is a fairly new phenomenon. It's strange to think that the iconic Finnish style dates back to...our grandparents' childhood. Not further than that.

In Japan, Finnish functionalism is very popular. As Japan has developed its own modern design, it is easy to adopt and borrow each others' styles. 

 Japanese restaurant in Finland with Artek furniture.

Thirsty

It's been a while. It's always a while... Sorry for that. 

During my absence I have finished my master's thesis, given in to my friends' brainwashing and started watching True Blood (I do find it really lame, though, but I've been told it gets better), got a new boyfriend, and applied for a few jobs - and I hopefully am about to get something done.

I don't really get the vampire stuff. True Blood, Twilight, and then the one with Tom Cruise and the other dude, whatisit... I just never understood the thing about vampires. Nor ghost stories. I've never been into the gothic type of horror, blood and coffins and all that jazz. 

Therefore, I have no idea what others see in the emotionless, bloodless, anemic, halfdead vampire dudes who usually have really bad hair and serious emotional problems. Caused by the long life, undoubtedly, but still... There's a real world full of bastards, idiots and violence freaks, and you're attracted to the ones who on top of the previous features want to suck your blood. Great. 

They wouldn't even appreciate my cooking, as they don't need to eat. *tear* Although, more for me. 

On pictures

Photography, once a noble art, has become, thanks to the move to digital, a mental illness - Nigel Farndale

I read an article in the Guardian about cellphone cameras and the recent obsession to document things. People used to keep diaries, now they take pictures.

Whenever you see something interesting, whether it is the Eiffel Tower or a funny duck, you take a picture. You upload everything on Facebook or Twitter or your personal blog. Everyone feels the need to share -- 'Hi look at me I'm in France, there's the Eiffel Tower behind me!'

Ok, I get the point of taking a few pics of places you've been, but as it said in the article, people sometimes forget to take time and enjoy the view, and spend two minutes taking a few pictures, and then turn away, because they have captured the scenery. Is taking a few pics everything you went to France for?

And it's totally fine that you upload pictures to places, and that you share your important holiday pictures and party pics et cetera, but I have some friends who just dump the entire content of their memory card on Facebook. I mean, everything. The blurry pictures, the unclear pictures, the accidental pictures of people's feet. Everything.

Ok digital age makes it easy to take pictures, but I think some people should really reconsider if they should at least choose the good ones out of the 200 a Facebook album can contain. Rather 10 clear and pretty pictures than 10 clear and 190 blurry ones.

People are so obsessed about sharing their happiness that the quality of the shared product drops. Photography is available for everyone, also to people whose only ability is to point and shoot. Should people be taught not to share everything? To edit their pictures? To choose good ones among their shots? 

On the other hand, the digital era also reaches the other end of the continuum: DSLRs are available, and an amateur photographer no longer needs a darkroom and expensive chemicals, papers etc. Sure, they are still expensive as hell, but it gives hope that not all digital material uploaded in the net is blurry cellphone pictures.

My mobile phone is from 2006, and it doesn't have a camera. It even has an antenna! What an ancient relic!

Oh, I wrote an entry about pictures without a single picture. Great. 

On creativity

A while has passed since the last update. The reason for this is that I'm totally out of ideas and inspiration! 

I would like to make this blog into a collection of texts that discuss one theme at a time, but lately I haven't come up with any themes. 

So I might just write about creativity, writer's blocks and all that.

I'm a bad writer. I know I should write every day just to get a routine going on, but too often I forget. The last time I wrote something (other than blog texts) was two or three weeks ago, I think. It's way too long. If I'm ever going to make a living by writing, I can't keep skipping work like this. 

I mostly write at night. Or early in the morning. Or rather, the time I wake up, since I usually sleep late. I often get ideas just before falling asleep, and I have to start writing it down, sketching the sceneries and characters right that second - be it 4 am or not - because ideas escape me. Too many times the ideas keep me awake, and despite them being good ideas, I don't write them down, and by the next day when I'm having my morning tea and having a pen in my hand, the idea is gone.
 

Inspiration is a thing I value and I make it my first priority when it happens. I know I should get rid of being controlled by inspiration and instead just write all the time, but I actually like getting ideas in weird places at weird time and just being swallowed by the concentration that follows an idea. I need to work on an idea right the second it arrives. I skip school, work, and sleep just to work on a story. 

Too bad that ideas haven't been visiting me lately. Too much real life things and personal drama has been going on. It's like real life and inspiration can't coexist in my head. That kind of arrangement sucks, but I can't help it. 

Skin

I've been meant to write something for a long time, but I haven't been able to come up with a proper topic. This blog is about thoughts about phenomena, not necessarily the daily stuff in my life. Mostly because my life is currently sort of boring, and also because I have another blog illustrating my daily life.

Anyway, today I decided to write about...

Nudity.

Everyone has an opinion about that. Is it acceptable? Where can you be nude? Are you comfortable being naked? With family? With friends? With your significant other? With people of the opposite sex? Does nudity have sexual  or erotic connotations?

Both the cultures I like have a social aspect to nudity and bathing. In Finland it's sauna, in Japan it's onsen and ofuro. In both places you are supposed to be stark naked, no matter if the people in the advertisements wear a towel. NO TOWELS. You don't take shower in a towel, do you?

I've never made nudity into a big deal, and I have no problems going to a mixed sauna. There's nothing erotic about that to me. Sure, there must be some thoughts going on in people's heads when they see naked bodies. Maybe comparing bodies and body parts, but for me it's just bathing, relaxing, talking in an environment that just happens to be a sauna and people happen to be naked.
 

During summer at the summer houser after/during sauna there's often the other thing: Naked swimming. Nothing bad about that. Seeing everyone in bright light being all sweaty with different amounts of hair in different amounts of places. Going for a swim in the birthday suit.  Natural. Free. Relaxing. Look how much fun they're having!

In Japan I haven't been to a mixed onsen, but the women in the bathhouses seem to find the idea of being naked very natural and just focus on the thing itself: bathing. There's also a curious word in Japanese: hadaka no tsukiai, translating roughly into "naked communion". There's also an English-based Japanese word sukinshippu "skinship" describing the physical closeness people share while bathing together and being able to be natural with each other.

Public bathing in Japan goes back into the history: in the old days houses didn't have their own bath tub, so people went to the local sentō, a bath house. They talked with their neighbours while scrubbing themselves and soaking their bodies in the hot water. The hot water comes from hot springs, which are common in Japan, as it has lots of volcanic activity. The water from the hot springs has different minerals that are good for the body. 

Every now and then I read from the internet (everything must be true in the internet) how people are insecure about their bodies, and how they want to make love with lights out so that their partner wouldn't see them naked. There's a part of me going "excuse me, what?", but sure this could be in cultures where nudity isn't that common, and the only naked bodies people see are in pornography, and oh yeah, that's a good source for inspiration! and proper self-esteem! Real plastic bodies, and you can start crying you aren't like that and your partner cannot like you the way you are because the only bodies he/she's seen are photoshopped with added silicone and professional make-up and camera tricks.

Get REAL. If you can't like yourself the way you are, are you waiting for another body to appear out of nowhere, and you can change it like clothes? 

(Pictures in this entry not by me.)

Trainspotting

I've always been a train person. I'd pick train over bus any time that's possible.

(Picture above not by me, taken the year I was born.)

My dad's been working for the railway company since 1976, so when I was a kid I was entitled to discount or free trips and such. Family trips were done mostly by train. I lived close to a railroad, and heard the trains if I listened hard enough. There it goes again, the same night train from the south, bringing back tired travelers. Oh there's the long and slow freight train! Oh does it ever end?

Railways in this country are ok, but recently the trains have been late quite often, and the entire company has become a joke. I don't know if I should join the annoyed consumers or stand my ground and be for the company instead of against it. I like trains, and the system works if you aren't in a hurry.

In Japan trains are a whole other ballgame. There are the superfast trains such as Nozomi (which goes 300 km/h), but also the local trains. I have to admit that I prefer the local ones. The slow, noisy trains with no air condition which stop at the smallest stations. The ones that go around the mountains whereas the bullet trains go through them.

One of the most amazing experiences was taking the local trains through southern Kyūshū, slow trains going by rivers, small villages and endless, endless mountains that would make Bilbo say that he's seen enough already. Sometimes an elderly woman would get on the train, sometimes a group of schoolboys, sometimes there'd be just empty station. It took 7 hours to go the less than 200 km trip, but it was full of amazing sceneries, and I'd do it again if I had the time and money to spend time there.

I was reminded of the shaking trains and small stations when I went to visit a friend a while ago, and took a route I hadn't taken in almost 10 years. Finnish old trains have nostalgic value to me, and I for some reason prefer the old ones over the new and fast ones. The seats are uncomfortable, there is no air condition, the toilets are dirty. Still I like them. They are full of memories. They go on routes that faster trains won't go anymore, they stop on a stations faster trains don't stop anymore. They go through the wilderness with speed that allows you to look around and feel a lot more. On summer the windows are open, and the wind is actually a better option than the noisy/broken air condition in the newer trains.

There's something nostalgic about trains. There's something strong and secure. The history. Tunnels. Bridges made of stone and steel. The weight of the locomotive. Smoke, oil and iron. The smells at the station and the platform. The announcements.  The conductor's uniform. The waiting. People and their luggage. Restaurant cars. Tickets bought, stamped, lost or thrown away. Crossings and the sound of the warning bell that passes by like a memory gained and lost. Abandoned stations in empty villages. Father meeting their children on the platform. Old ladies hugging each other before the other gets on the train.

Roads can go anywhere, but a railway is a special thing.

Water

This time I thought I'd write about water. It is the most important element for me, and something I've always felt comfortable with. Water has been always there - in the land of thousand lakes you can't really avoid it. 

I think I learned to swim when I was 6. Maybe 7. When I was a kid, I lived 500 metres away from the nearest beach, and also enjoyed swimming at our summer house.

When I write really cheesy poetry, I mostly write about rain. When I'm looking for a place to relax, I want it to be by a lake or a river. 

There is nothing better than going rowing in the middle of a white summer night when it's all quiet and the water is a mirror. 

I live in a city where there's water everywhere. There's a big lake in the middle of the city (as in many cities around here). I never thought I'd miss water that much, but being abroad where all the water was either the vast sea in the coast or rivers in the inland made me think that I really want to be close to this "tame" water. Not flowing rivers or stormy seas, but lakes.