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.

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.