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.

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.

The Lucky Strike Problem (also, Hanami Photodump)

I have a pack of cigarettes in my front pocket. I haven't started smoking, mind you. I've just run into an interesting moral dilemma.

It started near the end of a 花見 (hanami, flower-viewing party) I threw last night on the banks of the Shukugawa near my home. Like 20 people came and it was a ton of fun and when it got late and we started to clean up there was a pack of Lucky Strikes that somebody had left on the tarp. There were only a few of us left, and nobody wanted them. Now somebody had paid good money for these, and moreover, the pack was practically full. By giving them to somebody I could reduce waste and increase somebody's utility. It was, apparently, an economic problem.

But of course I don't really like cigarettes. The other option was that I could simply throw them away. It would be a waste, true, but not much of one since ultimately it'd be like throwing away a pill of cyanide. I feel like this is what I should do. But at the same time, why throw away something perfectly good?

I guess it's sort of a weird moral dilemma. Maybe I shouldn't think so much about it.

Here are pictures from the hanami. Enjoy.

Photo Dump: Eiga Mura

I went to Eiga Mura a couple weeks ago with a family that's friends (related? I'm embarassingly unclear on this point) with my homestay family. Eiga Mura is a sort of theme park that doubles as an Edo-period set for the historical dramas that are always playing on Japanese TV. Lots of old-style buildings and streets paved with nothing but dirt. We saw a rehearsal of sorts. We saw a chanbara play involving the warlord and dynasty-founder Tokugawa Ieyasu and his loyal retainer Hattori Hanzo (not this one) fighting, oh, some evil dude. We saw a ton of incongruous cosplaying teenagers.