It’s amazing what you can do with a mail-order greenhouse kit, a plot of public land and a deep love of pollen.

The San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers recently re-opened, after much of the glass structure was smashed in a storm in 1995.

It started as a structure built in the late 19th century, from a mail-order greenhouse kit. Over time, the official propoganda goes, it grew into one of the most varied collections of flora in the U.S.

(An interesting side-note about the official line: it claims that the death of James Lick, the wealthy investor who purchased the original kit and had intended it to be a greenhouse on his San Jose estate, is unfortunate. It seems fortunate to me that he died, otherwise S.F. would be bereft of this beautiful conservatory and we’d all be trekking to San Jose to see it. Talk about blessings in disguise…)

Whatever the official line is, the Conservatory houses an amazing collection of flowers, trees, shrubs (shockingly, no Bushes) and even some butterflies. It’s sort of uninteresting to descibe what it was like, right? There’s a bunch of plants, and a few animals, and they all hang out in this glass-and-white metal tripartite domed structure that rises up from a grassy hill like alien breasts.

What was interesting were the colors. I’d never seen such shades. Who knew that in fog-drenched Ess Eff – and folks, call it San Fran and you’ll get dope slapped, it’s like calling New York “the Big Apple” to its face – you could find tropical reds, blacks, yellows and purples.

Flowers were not a favorite subject of mine to photograph, until I started using my digital camera. Forced to use color, because the quality of digital black-and-white didn’t impress me, I was confronted by the vibrancy of flowers whenever they made their way into my shots. They jumped off the page at me.

The colors were intense, sometimes overwhelming, and became entirely different subjects. At the Conservatory, this point was practically beaten into my head. Flowers don’t have much in the way of texture, but then, their beauty lies in their visual appeal.

Tortoise trees and meat-eating greenery, catepillar cocoons and the cool of mountain air, the Conservatory is a tiny but complex jewel well worth exploring.

(written on Tuesday, September 30, 2003 at 18:35.)

So I’m back in America, Land of the Free and Home of the Fat.

It’s shocking, really. Everybody here is huge. I may be Big in Japan, but I’m merely Average in America.

I arrived last Thursday, at around 9:30 in the morning. As the plane descended, heading north from San Jose and down towards the tarmac and the churning waves in San Francisco Bay glittered below, I was overwhelmed by an intense feeling: I was coming home.

So far, being home has kind of been like revisiting a life that I never really led, a kind of jamais vu, I guess, except that I really did live here.

When I actually got into my parents’ house, I was a bit disturbed by the fact that something was, well, disturbing. Something was wrong, uncomfortable. Quintessentially not home. I dropped my bags in the hallway and walked a bit further towards the kitchen, and then it hit me like a boot to the head.

My shoes were still on. One year in Japan, and I nearly get nauseous wearing shoes in the house. Beholden to my new instincts, there wasn’t much to do but go back to the doorway, and take off the offending soles.

(written on Sunday, September 28, 2003 at 03:53 PST.)

My very good friend Sara from Boston recently stayed with me at the Gaijin Ghetto for several weeks. Much merriment was to be had, much food drunk and beverages eaten. There was severe thinning of the wallets, all for excellent causes – although our livers might not agree.

Sara’s Japanese-American, and so is a much better authority on Japanese culture than I am. Part of my decision to move here was influenced by her, so I asked her to write down some thoughts on her second trip to Tokyo.

“As someone who is half Japanese but had never been to Japan before last year, I find the Japanese fascinating in many ways. It’s interesting to me to see how some of the traditions we had growing up were mainly because Mom was Japanese – for instance, we always had a wet cloth on the table at supper to wipe our mouths and hands. We never used napkins. My mom always carried around several packets of tissue in her purse (and still does). We each had our own pair of slippers and never wore shoes in the house. Other people had Christmas ham or turkey – we had sukiyaki.

“One thing that strikes me about the Japanese is their lack of physical affection for adults. Children are touched constantly, but once adolescence is reached, parents become more distant. My mother was always embarrassed by hugs and kisses from her children and husband. Japanese friends who have not met in thirty years greet each other by bowing. To a Westerner like myself who is very physical, this seems bizarre. Many of the younger Japanese are more open with affection, holding hands and sometimes even kissing in public, though this may bring down the condemnation of the older, more conservative types (and there are plenty of them).

“There also seems to be quite the generation gap here, but more for men than women. Younger Japanese men often tend to be long-haired, many with varicolored dye jobs, and their fashions are extremely androgynous. Older men generally fit the stereotype of “Japan, Inc.” with three-piece suits, briefcases and slicked-down short hair. While older women are fairly friendly, it seems that the older a man, the less likely he will have any reaction to a gaijin but a slight sneer.

“As I once told Seth, the Japanese are dedicated, and they play as hard as they work. I’m amazed by a country where most people work ten hours a day, six days a week, yet for about US$10 you can go to an onsen and treat yourself to the ultimates in hedonism, with whirlpools, hot spas, massage, and “relaxation rooms” where you can stretch out, have a cold drink, or just fall asleep for a while. And for a culture that is oppressive about physical affection, the Japanese care nothing at all about nudity. When I came last year with my mother, I was very amused that she was so embarrassed to go to a public bath. She admitted that she had become too Westernized to be comfortable any more.

“I think I’m too American to ever be completely comfortable in this culture, especially since I was raised to be a self-sufficient woman and that is still the exception here. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like to visit. Especially considering I can’t get Haagen-Dasz melon-flavored ice cream in the States.”

There’s something that I particularly enjoy about post-season hikes. Definitely, the lack of people is a big draw. There’s no reason to go off and enjoy nature if the path looks like it’s got the same foot traffic as Shinjuku station. But the air is cooler, and the anticipation of fall and winter, snow and hot chocolate, makes September the ideal hiking time.

Last year, I hiked Half Dome in Yosemite National Park in California. This year, it was Mt. Fuji’s turn to be trodden on.

Mt. Fuji is 3,870-and-some-odd meters up. (That’s nearly 12,000 feet for you Americans.) It is not easy. It is not a cakewalk; you can not hike Fuji in a wheelchair.

Not only is Mt. Fuji a diificult climb, for reasons I’ll get to momentarily, but it’s also butt-ugly. Fugly, with emphasis on the “fucking ugly” bit. It’s scree and volcanic ash and jagged rock, and steep. Not straight vertical like the top of Half Dome, but still pretty darn steep.

So the steepness is challenging, and the crap-ass conditions make it worse. It’s not a pretty hill, so why even bother hiking it? Because, everybody swore that watching the sunrise from the top was worth the trouble.

They were right. The sunrise was one of the best I’ve ever seen, and it made the slow-going and the explosive diarrhea that I had and all the other little difficulties of the climb well worth it. For those interested in a post-season, September Fuji climb, here’s a little list of things to bring that a friend of Martine’s wrote up. I found it to be helpful, and you probably will, too.

When we started hiking, the sun had begun to set. As the night grew deeper and darker, and we hiked higher, we discovered we didn’t need our flashlights. The clouds covering the cities diffused their light, and the half-moon shone down upon us, and the Milky Way glittered like the stellar river that everybody sees it as.

And there was the silence. Glorious, deafening, and utterly unattainable in Tokyo. Long stretches of complete silence. For the second time in two days, I stood still and listened intently to nothing.

There was no wind, and no trees to be rustled by the non-existant wind. At some unknown elevation, the light from below ceased to help us, and the jagged volcanic rock was too dangerous to climb up without a flashlight.

But before I turned on my headlamp, I enjoyed the silence.

The town of Fujiyoshida is a small one-horse town with the luck of being located at the bottom of Mt. Fuji. Views of Fuji-san, as it’s known here, are the main export. That, and peace and quiet.

I’ve written a lot about the virtues of getting out of Tokyo. A few months back, Kamakura provided me with a much-needed break from the mind-boggling sensory overload that is the Big T.

Fujiyoshida is pretty much the same. The wonderful Martine offered to host me and my friend visiting from the U.S., and since our arrival there has been much rejoicing.

The air is cleaner, smells cleaner. The scent of pine, and the moments of dead air, of silence, of hearing not even the faintest, most distant rumble of cars is shocking. Where did all the noise go, my ears ask. And how can we get it to go away more often, my head wonders.

The highlight of Fujiyoshida was this fantastic shrine, Churieto. Perched on the top of a hill, the orange and red paint common to shrines and temples in Japan was offset by something I hadn’t seen in these places before: metal. Chrome mouldings and fittings hugged the bottom of columns. Surprising because shrines usually try to be as naturalistic as possible, this was a welcome change.

The views from the top of Churieto were most pleasant, but that’s to be expected. What made the shrine really interesting were the little eccentricities; a pink box behind bars and a dragon fountain spewing holy water.

The town itself was a relaxing mix of textile mills and printing presses, rice fields and ramen shops where they make their own noodles, and one rusted-over, burnt husk of a small home.

Topped off with what was probably the last rose of summer, it was the perfect antidote to Tokyo.

Time to do what everybody else has done, at least once – I’m off to Fuji.