Photo Dump: Religions Field Trip

That's Eric and I in front of the unused site at Ise, where the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu no mikoto oomikami, is housed. The shrine alternates between two neighbouring plots of land, and is relocated from one to the other every twenty years so as to avoid the pollution that comes with habitation. You're not allowed to take pictures of the actual shrine.

Not last weekend but last last weekend I went to Ise, Tenri and Nara. Prof. Hermansen, who teaches a history class and the religions class I'm enrolled in, guided a fieldtrip to some holy places in Japan. Some important, some merely interesting.


These giant barrels are full of holy sake for the gods. These particular drums are outside Geiku, the lesser shrine at Ise, where the god who serves Amaterasu her meals is enshrined.


When we went the shrine had beguin a six-year process of collecting wood in order to relocate. These worshippers halp to collect and deliver it. This is still Geiku, the lesser of the two shrines.

This is the sacred river that surrounds Naiyu, where Amaterasu herself is enshrined. In olden times, people used to wade across in order to enter the shrine grounds, purifying themselves in the process. Nowadays there's a bridge.

Professor Hermansen translated for our Japanese guide (on the left). At the moment, he's explaining how the humongous boulder he's gesturing at (not pictured) is a kami, a god or spirit.

This is Tenri, a city built entirely around the new religion of the same name. It dates its foundation to the early 1800s, when its female founder came to be inhabited by the true creator deity, who had been away for some time and returned to find the world corrupt and filled with evil.

This is the building that houses the Jiba. Followers of Tenri believe that the first humans were created here, almost a billion years ago. The Jiba is a statue consisting of 13 slabs of stone, symbolizing this in some esoteric fashion. We stayed the night in Tenri, in one of their dorms. It was really cheap.

In the morning we went to Nara. This is a pagoda there.

Gemma, one of the new exchange students from Oxford, who absolutely fell in love with all the deer.

A prayer is written on a piece of paper which is then plastered over the openings of these lanterns.

A maiko, the daughters (or wives) of the kami at a shrine. Way back when they would have to be virgins. These days, it's just a part time job. This one asked us (very politely) to stop lazing about in front of the shrine.

Prof. Hermansen and one of the Oxfordites tried to figure out if people were still donating these big lanterns. Turns out the one they're looking at is from 1993.

An Anglican church in Nara. Among my weirder experiences while in Japan - saying the Apostles Creed in Japanese.
I sort of wonder how Anglican it really is. When the Tokugawa-era anti-Christian policies were lifted at the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868) a small number of secret Christians came out of hiding. The Pope sent some missionaries to test if their beliefs had remained pure after 250 years of persecution and isolation. Finally, they were declared non-Christian.

Some things I've done and some things I've don't.

Haven't had a lot of pictures on the 'ol blog in a while now. 'Bout time to go siftin' through some archived pictures. Saddle up.

Around the end of March I went to Kyushu with my (old) homestay family. It was a Japanese-style vacation, which means we spent one night at a hotpsring (Western-style room) and raced from one scenic spot to another for most of the day. We spent about 20 minutes in Huis Ten Bosch, a manufactured 17th century Dutch city on the Kyushu coast. (and yes I had to double-check the spelling) This is the hotel there, a prime spot for the increasingly-popular Western-style weddings.

We were travelling with Kazumi's parents (my homestay father) who live in, or perhaps just near, the city of Kumamoto, also Kyushu. This is the family shot I took. From left to right: Mom, Kenta, Dad, his Mom, his Dad. They're very nice, but I had some trouble understanding Kyushu dialect.

Koi no bori. Little cloth carp that Japanese people hang outside their houses like streamers for Children's Day, the 5th of May. Also sometimes, and confusingly, known as the Boy's Festival. In Japan carp are a symbol for strength and power; they are said to leap over waterfalls; there is a fairy tale, a strange one, where a carp swims up a waterfall and when it reaches the top is transformed into a dragon. There are normally three carp - a family with a small boy-carp - but this particular set, seen in front of a house a few doors up the hill from my new homestay, had a fourth, a black one, bigger than the others. With unknown meaning, even when I asked my homestay mother.

We went to the beach. Soccer was played, friends were made, heads were shaved. Nuff 'bout that.

We had a triple-birthday-smorgasbord of fun at an All-You-Can-Play-Park in Kobe. The intrepid duo pictured were among those who aged recently. That's John on the left, of Hotlanta, Georgia, and Michi, of way the hell middle of nowehere, Japan.

Jason, who you see with his best game face on, was the third. He was, shall we say, somewhat inebriated. He may have tried to lift me a few times. Jason is very strong. Jason succeeded.

The train back. One sleeping Jason not pictured. I think everybody's too funned-out to smile. And Mandy, on the left, is of course texting. That's Pat in the middle, whom we have met before.

Dog in the Night

A terrifying bit of news from Japan, that should not by any means be taken out of proportion.

Japanese police arrested a 17-year-old boy on Tuesday on suspicion of murdering his mother after he turned up at a police station carrying a severed human head in a bag.

[...]

The boy had not been attending school recently and was being treated by a psychiatrist, Kyodo said, adding that he had told investigators: “It would be
good if terrorism and war were gone from this world. I didn’t care who I killed.”

Kyodo [News Agency] said Tuesday was the mother’s birthday and she would have turned 47.

Every time I see a piece like this I think back to some of the things that Michael Moore talks about in Bowling for Columbine - how American violence is a direct result of American television, and that a culture of fear creates a culture of guns which in turn develops into a culture of murder. It's the sort of thing that makes sense.

But then I go off to safe Japan and see a murder on the news every night. Sometimes, if an especially intrepid reporter arrives early at the scene of an especially gruesome murder, they replay crimson clips of bloodstains and black garbage bags as I eat dinner. And I look at news about shootings in Toronto and gang-violence in Vancouver and I think "it would be good if hatred and violence were gone from this world."

And then I look at the statistics. And it's the same everywhere.

While government statistics show that overall juvenile crime and murder by minors -- those under 20 -- have declined in recent years, a number of sensational crimes has led to calls for harsher punishment of young offenders.

Matt and Funny Words

I have a new favourite phrase!

The phrase: 江戸の敵を長崎で討つ。

Pronounciation: Edo no kataki o nagasaki de utsu.

Translation: To enact revenge on someone in an unlikely place.

Literal translation: To attack your Edo enemy in Nagasaki.

What fun!

New Computer! (and some tangents)

I bought a new computer yesterday! It cost about $850, $720 of which come from savings from my part-time job. I feel really good about having actually purchased something substantial (almost entirely) with my own money. Especially because it was my own fault that my last computer is decrepit. Look mom, I'm responsible!

I also bought a couple Nintendo DS games on Junko's behalf. She's been spending way too much time playing Mario, the lazy kid. I, on the other hand, managed to spend the weekend (and, who am I kidding, most of the week) at bars, house parties (a rare event in homestay-ridden Japan) and travelling to Nishiwaki, a town in the middle of nowhere that translates quite literally as Western Armpit. As such I have not done any homework per se in quite some time. I did finish Kokoro though, thoroughly disliking most of it. There's way too much foreshadowing for a climax that is (not entirely) lacking profundity. Also, it just seems very structurally and thematically similar to Norwegian Wood, and having read that book so recently I am perhaps not in the mood to reread it.

The more I think about it...

...the more I feel that the entirety of the difference between North American and modern Japanese culture can be understood by watching one episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire from each country.

The Makioka Sisters

I finished The Makioka Sisters this afternoon, sitting on the banks of the Nigawa River as the sun went down. (I was half tanning the top of my head) Having devoured Norwegian Wood in a day and a half, I'd been slogging my way through the Makioka Sisters for upwards of two weeks. It's a dense, dense book, mostly dialogue and long, sinuous contemplation. Very little actually happens in terms of plot, but it's a fair task trying to keep track of what everybody is thinking, which, ends up being more important than the plot anyway.

It's a kind of plutocratic family drama, set in Kobe and Osaka, the kind of thing Jane Austen would have written if her name had been Tanizaki Jun'ichiro. Its themes are about what you would expect - declining fortunes, pride, face, irresponsible younger daughters, scandal, dashing young scapegraces, and a good deal of visiting and being visited by friends and acquaintances. In typical Japanese fashion the whole book is suffused with a sublime melancholy, which paints a thin lacquer of nostalgia over the entire piece and makes the scarce moments of serenity more pregnant. The characters are skillfully evoked, and a complex web of social relationships and past social relationships along with them.

But it's dreadfully slow, more so than Jane Austen, less so than Murakami Shikibu. This is partially due to the aforementioned viscosity, which belies swallowing the whole thing, let alone several chapters, in one sitting, but really it has more to do with the ponderous pace of aristocratic life in Taisho-era Japan. The sisters, there are four of them, often take an entire morning simply to get dressed, two or three days to make a decision, and several weeks to a month to write a letter. It is dolorous reading, though perhaps this is more a blessing than a curse, given the amount of time it takes to require merely two or three chapters.

In the final analysis it's difficult reading. I enjoyed it, and have gained an immense amount of respect for Tanizaki as an author. It is unfortunate, however, that we were given only two weeks to read it, and that there were not enough copies to go around to all the students.

The Kishis

This past seven days was Golden Week, a time in the Japanese calendar when non-festive holidays accumulate like nobody's business. I had school only on Tuesday and Wednesday, and have generally spent my time avoiding studying, seeing friends, and spending way more money than I have any right to. Last night was especially bad. I saw Babel, which is like $15 WITH the student discount, and ate out twice, and went to an arcade/fun-park/bowling-alley. We'd been planning to see Spiderman III, but it sold out while we were queueing, and I somewhat thoughtlessly recommended that we see a movie about language confusion of which only a quarter is English. The rest was Arabic, Spanish, JSL, and conveniently, Japanese itself, all with Japanese subtitles. We were with some Japanese students who could follow most of it, but maybe got less out of it since the Tower of Babel is a little outside their eidos. Jo(h?)nathan, a new exchange student, basically gave up trying to follow the story. As for me, I spent most of my time being perfectly in tune with the motif, less so the plot. I don't know if that means I understood the movie better, or worse.

It occured to me that I haven't actually posted any pictures of my new homestay family, and that maybe introductions were in order. It also seemed like a good chance to take advantage of some pictures I had taken last week when I made Mexican food for everybody. So without further ado, the Kishis (pronounced like the plural of Quiche!).

This is Eiji, he works in something related to welding, I don't entirely understand what it is. He spends a lot of his free time fishing with his friends. He drinks a lot of sake and shochu when he's home. These days he's building a deck in the backyard, but it's raining today so instead he's spent the entire time in bed. Not that I blame him for that - Japanese men really do spend way too much time in the office.

This is Yoko, my homestay mother and a devoted housewife. I am incredibly indebted to her for agreeing to make me vegetarian food while I'm here, since it's kind of a nuisance. She spends a lot of her time asking me questions about English, which she is studying. This probably would have annoyed me, more than it does, if it was the beginning of the year, but because I already have opportunities to speak Japanese I'm trying to be helpful where I can. She also makes a lot of assumptions about foreigners, by which I mean Westerners, that I am trying to correct. (we had a conversation, not 20 seconds ago, about how not all foreigners eat french fries all the time) This is generally a problem I have with Japanese people, but more so with her than usual.

This is Junko, and if she knew how to find my blog she would totally beat me up for posting this picture of her. She's my homestay sister, currently working at an international kindergarten or pre-school a little east of Nishinomiya. Like Kenta, she speaks good English, and is very "foreign" sometimes in the way she thinks. She has a good number of rich Indian friends who buy her clothes and food. She is older than me, but wouldn't want me to tell you by how much. (which maybe is indicative)

There's also another daughter, Yuko, who graduated recently and is working at a trading company in Tokyo. I've only met her the one time when she came back for Golden Week, and she left this morning on the bullet train. She was sick the whole time she was here, and not photo-ready. She spends a lot of her time reading fashion magazines.

僕はお坊さんです

Photo Dump: Camping in Nagano Prefecture

I went camping last weekend with Pat and his homestay family. (and their dog) I haven't been camping in a long time. It was 懐かしい. I spent a good deal of time thinking about Georgian Bay, and blaming Japanese urbanism for blotting out the stars. We spent the days touring the area and visiting hot springs, and the nights roasting konyaku and agedofu over a portable campfire. We went hiking on the top of a volcano.

We were in Nagano Prefecture, which is where everybody goes skiing in winter. Most of the snow had melted by now, but it was pretty high up so it was still pretty cold. Our first night it went down to below zero. Our third day, I came back to Nishinomiya with a cold. Go figure.