Bridge?

School's been cancelled for two weeks due to an outbreak of measles. Not even allowed on campus, much less the gym. I think I'm going to have to make a habit of biking up Mount Kabutoyama behind the school.

Worser still, we're not allowed to travel? I don't really know what's up with that, since as John succintly put it to me, "i dont plan on catching something ive been vaccinated to" (it was by txt, cut him some slack) and the Japanese students don't seem to have any prohibitions. Whatever, Okinawa is the plan, if I can get the time off work. Or maybe I'll finally get out to Hiroshima and Tsushima.

Partay!

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.

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.

What I did on the internet this morning.

One of the big problems with the internet is its ability to eat up time. I have, for instance, a phone call to make and an email to write. But instead I eneded up doing this:

CBC.ca --> Confusing the virtual world with reality by Heather Mallick--> The readers strike back by Gary Kamiya --> caliban's role? on shakespeareforums.com + Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats + Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR --> Revisionist Photos: Removing the Horrors of the Third Reich From the Pages of History --> Various emails to various people regarding things I'd discovered today.

It's terrible. On the other hand, through the wonders of multitasking I managed to meet several of the new exchange students that have appeared on campus since last week, who, like the rest of us have gathered at the communal watering-hole of the computer lab. Their names are Patrick and Gemma and I think there's another one named Susanna who lives in Munich but goes to Oxford, but I haven't added her to Facebook yet. Plus, I need to learn where Munich is. (I suspect Germany, but I may be wrong and it may be in Ireland or something)

Anyway, must run to class. New teacher and everything. Japanese language. I'm hoping I've been bumped up to Level 3 and just nobody's bothered to tell me.

I am poooooooooooor.

Speaking of ridiculously expensive things, I paid my next round of student fees to Kwansei: 244 000 yen, a little less than 2 500 dollars. Exciting!

I am pooooor. I've started a stash for my get-a-computer-again fund with monies from my part-time job. Sitting at over $300 now, which actually isn't that bad. If I don't do too much travelling I may actually be able to buy a new computer outright. On the other hand, doing too much travelling is kind of the whole point of being in Japan. Decisions decisions.

I've started indulging my guilty addiction to roleplaying games again. We're playing Nobilis, an amazing and stylish game that treads lightly on the heels of philosophy. It's been a few years since I've actually had a chance to game, and I'm really enjoying it.

About four things

I'm in the library today from dawn to dusk, finishing up this paper that I thought was due tomorrow. Turns out that may not be true. I ran into Graeme on the way in, and he pointed out that while the English copy of our instructions simply says that we have to hand a copy into CIEC before our presentation on the ninth, the Japanese copy says we must do this the day before. Maybe. Literally it says "by about the eighth of March."

Huh? "By about the eighth"? Does that mean the morning of the ninth is okay? I don't understand.

Anyway, I've been walking around with this J-pop song stuck in my head for the last couple of days. It's called Chu-Lip, by Otsuka Ai, and the music video is terribly disturbing. I saw the whole crew on one of the many celebrity talk shows that float around Japanese TV. It was pretty hilarious, and the drag queen with the tutu kept hitting on one of the hosts.

Less hilarious but equally disturbing is the trial of Canadian citizen and refugee Husein Dzhelil in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region , China. Exactly what he stands charged with is unclear. Mr. Dzhelil, who fled XUAR in the mid 1990s, was detained by the authorities in Uzbekistan in March 2006, and handed over to China in June. He was held incommunicado initially, but on the 2nd of February a trial was held that, for the first time, his family was permitted to attend. His treatment is shocking, but not terribly surprising. This is China, after all.

Those close to Husein Dzhelil say he claims that he was tortured after his
extradition to China in June 2006, including by being starved and deprived of
sleep during the first fifteen days of his imprisonment. He has also claimed
that Chinese authorities threatened that he would “disappear” and “be buried
alive” unless he signed a document. This document was later held up as a
confession, although Husein Dzhelil reportedly later claimed he did not know
what he had signed. (Amnesty International)

The Amnesty Page has information on how to write the Prime Minister (of China), and other officials. There's also a link to a year-old open-letter to Stephen Harper, whose integrity when dealing with China's human rights record and Chinese officials has been impeccable. You may remember this article from the Epoch Times about Harper's tumultuous chat with Hu Jintao at APEC in November. Mr. Dzhelil was a hot topic at the time.

Whatever else may be said about the Prime Minister, I appreciate his efforts on this front.

Oh, and one last thing that I'm sure will offend my mom. I've decided to sign up for the Prime Minister's mailing list. I look forward to comparing it to the NDP newsletter, which I have found to encapsulate the worst sort of self-important aggression that has come to characterize the Left Wing. We'll see how it goes.

Japan is still awesome.

Back in Japan. It's still awesome.

My flight back was totally uneventful - I spent most of the time blissfully asleep, read some pretty decent Greg Bear, and watched The Illusionist, which is not that decent at all. I did have to kill 5 hours in Detroit, but I managed to find a restaurant that does a delicious veggie omelette and an excellent, unsweetened iced tea. I didn't even lose my passport.

I don't have any class until Thursday, and as of Friday the term is done. Which sounds relaxing, but in reality I'm up to my neck, maybe my forehead, in essays, and on top of that have a 10 lb. brick of a Japanese grammar final on Thursday. The essays aren't long - they average around 4 pages, double-spaced, and most of my sources are class readings - but I was not very enthusiastic about work over the Christmas break (hell, who is?) and now I'm paying the price for it. Boo that.

Anyway, back to the grind. I guess I should post some pictures from Christmas back in T.O. or something like that. Gimme a couple days.

Apologies and a Party

I've been bad. I've been away too long, I've maybe been with other blogs. I promise to be here more often from now on. I can make it better. I can become a better blogger. I will try my hardest and never let you down again.

Pictures, and lots of them. From the Christmas Party.

Rob (Mount Allison), Rob's host mother, and Barbara (from New York) before the doors open.
Miwako (my nihongo partner), my host mother, and Barbara again.
Me and Yoyo (U of T, and actually a Honger but terribly cute in a kimono)
Wei Wei (Chinese, but goes to schoo in Australia) sang some J-Pop song that I didn't know. Michelle (not pictured, also Chinese, but goes to UBC) accompanied on the piano.
John (from Taiwan) played Sakura, a traditional Japanese song, on his guitar. It was amazing.

A blurry me and Kinu (she's Japanese, and her name means silk, which is awesome). She gave me a Doraemon cell-phone-dangley today.

There was maybe 5 minutes of dance-party-ness near the end of the night. The entertainment is laid on pretty thick in Japan, but any given event never lasts very long. It's like twitch-gaming. This is... who I wonder?

This is Stephan (of Sweden, or maybe Norway) and Stephan's girlfriend (a Japanese) doing their sexy snakey dance.

From right to left, we have Marie (from a college in France associated with Lyon Deux), my host brother Kenta, my host mother again, and Marie's host mother, who invited me over for dinner.

Eric (from Queen's) and I sang a couple songs of our own. It was a bunch of fun. You'd be surprised at the number of people who know the words to If I Had a Million Dollars.

Gaijin Desu Kara

I sang a song with Eric, he's from Queens, at the Christmas party on Friday night. (more on the party later, because the long post I wrote out seconds ago was lost through the perturbations of the internet and I don't feel up to rehashing it)

Actually, we sang two songs together, and one he just sang on his own. It was a ton of fun, have I mentioned how much I like singing?

The last song, the one Eric did on his own, he also wrote. He's a talented man, not mentioning the fact that he speaks like four (4) languages. Here's the lyrics to the one he wrote, because they're hilarious.

Though, if you've never been to Japan on exchange it might be somewhat less so.

Gaijin Desu Kara

I am just a gaijin
Okaasan will blow a fuse
If once more I forget
To remove my shoes.

Yet another gaijin smash
We walk when we eat
And every weekend one of us
Collapses in the street

Big Papa's katsu curry
For me is haute cuisine
But oh how much I miss
Canadian poutine

Yet another gaijin smash
At dinner I blew my nose.
Before I eat, please tell me
What the hell are those?

Je ne suis qu'un Gaijin
Qu'est-ce que je peux dire?
Il faut que tu comprennes
Kani je peux pas lire.

Wil ick nur ein gaijin bin
Ich cerstandte gar nichts,
Als du mich gesagt hatte
“Achtung” Auf japanisch.

Gaijin-desu kara
Nandemo dekimasu.
Aruite-kinagara
Itsumo tabemasu

"Japan is a Safe Country"

Panic moment from yesterday:

I've gotten really good about being healthy recently. I'm going to the gym three times a week, mostly to run but I'll do weight training every now and again as well. I'm really proud of myself.

When I check in at the Training Center's front desk the お爺さん ojiisan staff member (alright, the word actually means "old man" but in Japan it's actually a polite form of address) hands me a key for a locker in the changeroom. So I get dressed and go running for an hour and a bit and get a really bad cramp, and then I'm on my way back up the stairs to the changeroom when I realize that I don't have my key on me. So I sprint the rest of the way, the sound of my pounding heart clamouring in my ears, and there is my key, still in the door of my locker which isn't even closed all the way. And my cellphone is still there, and my wallet is still there, and all my books and my bag and my shoes and clothes are all still there. And this is an amazing thing.

I've heard that Japan is a very safe country, I think almost everybody has. One of my readings recently pointed out that when the comparison is made the touchstone is usually the United States, which is unfair - the truth is that Japan is a normal country, and the US is just terribly dangerous. But even so, Japan is safer than most European countries. When I thought about it afterwards I realized that if the same thing were to happen in Vancouver I wouldn't be terribly surprised either. The difference is that in Japan I was less surprised to see my stuff untrammeled.

Which, I mean, is cool.

Out of the fold

I just quit the choir. God was that embarassing. Everybody got really silent as I tried to make my explanation exceedingly vague and polite in broken Japanese.

It went down like this. I realized one night after karaoke how much I like to sing. I started going to choir practices. They met three times a week and they really are lovely people.

Like three weeks later I learned that if I wanted to join I had to do chapel services as well. It's like two a month maybe, not that big a deal.

A week after that I learned that on top of regular practices and chapels, there were also three practices a week for each section. Which brings the sum total up to, what, like 6-7 events a week?

Hells no! Karaoke suits me just fine.