Giant update dump of DOOM

Okay, let's try to go for a real update this time.

First off, in case you thought I was kidding about Dutch licorice, the internet has once again proven me right.  I especially like the Japanese guy's reaction.

Anyway, dang, so much to write about.  This is going to be kind of brief because I have a lot of catch up on, and I've already visited basically everywhere in this post a bunch of times, so you can go back to previous posts to find pictures.

Let's see...

So last week on Wednesday I went with Kim and Louki to Ise, because they wanted to see Ise and I am always okay with visiting Ise.  It was pretty exciting, but since it was my fourth time at Ise I will not really write much here.
...also, Kim and Louki got a bunch of my friends from the dorm to make a little book for me with pictures (INCLUDING A PICTURE HALI DREW OF ALL OF US AS OUR RESPECTIVE PONIES IT IS NOW CANON) and little letters and I might have cried a little but you can't prove it and Kim definitely doesn't have photographic evidence shhhhh.  It was basically one of the nicest things anyone has ever done from me and oh my gosh yes.  I will treasure it forever.

On Thursday morning I helped out at the tsukinamisai at Susanoo Shrine, at which there was much excitement that I shall not write about but it involved someone nearly passing out, and then afterwards I got FREE LUNCH and also got to listen to a long and complicated discussion about the shrine's finances and their relationship with a couple of important neighborhood organizations.  Basically, it was good stuff all around.
Thursday evening I went to pick up my dad from the airport, and managed to get him food without killing him* and got him to his hotel.

On Friday morning I met up with my dad, showed him around some sites near my dorm, like Koushouji and Gosha Shrine and the super awesome bakery in the Valor.  I also filled out some paperwork so that he could come up into my room and look around, and I am sure he will tell you how COMPLETELY SPOTLESS and NOT DISORGANIZED my room is.  Right, Dad?  Anyway, he also got to meet Louki and Grace, which was cool.
...aaaaand then I had to run away to class.
But after class we met up with Itou-san, who came by in her car to pick us up!  We were going to go to Nagoya Castle, but the traffic was really bad, so we wound up getting there right before they closed.  We decided to save the castle for another day, and we walked around Meijo Park and the castle moat instead.  I would just like to note that the koi in the castle moat are INCREDIBLY CREEPY and I am pretty sure I am going to have nightmares about their creepy mouths.
ANYWAY, after that we drove past the City Archives, which are housed in this building that looks like it belongs on the Harvard campus. Not even kidding.
And then we went to Kawahara Shrine to see adorable baby turtles and definitely not to show my dad the shrine or anything.
And then we went to dinner at a really good Chinese restaurant, and Itou-san made endless fun of my dad for eating less than me.  And then Itou-san totally stole the check and SOMEDAY I WILL WIN AND PAY FOR A MEAL.  I am planning.  PLANNING, I SAY.
Anyway, it was all around a very nice day!

Saturday, Dad and I went to Inuyama to see the castle and the other stuff in Inuyama.  The castle was much warmer than it was when I went with Nick, but the stairs were still as terrifying.  We also went to this cool little puppet museum that is just outside of the castle grounds.  And then I introduced my dad to soft cream (it's like the much better version of American soft serve), which may have been a mistake because he might be mildly addicted to it now oops.  Anyway, after that we went to the temples on the mountain, and met this Buddhist priest who showed us around a tiny recreation of the Shikoku pilgrimage.  The Shikoku pilgrimage is a route of 88 temples located around the entire island of Shikoku, which takes approximately a month to complete on foot.  There are hundreds of recreations of the pilgrimage, usually which employ sand or dirt from each site and some sort of sacred object from each site.  This particular recreation had little pots of sand below the floor and a scroll from each temple.  Anyway, I got a pretty long explanation from the priest, because he was pretty excited that I understood what he was talking about.  So that was cool.
After that we were going to go over and check out the Monkey Park, except it turned out to be an amusement park?  A really expensive amusement park?  I dunno.  So instead we headed back to Nagoya, bummed around Osu Kannon and bought AMAZING MEAT BUNS, and then went over to Kanayama to grab curry for dinner.
So that was Saturday!

Sunday, Dad came to my dorm to drop off his bags for the day, and then we went to Nagoya Castle and actually managed to get inside this time.  We also visited the Tokugawa Art Museum later that day, which had a big collection of popular books from the 18th century, including, weirdly enough, a bunch of guides to the red light district.  I don't even know.  There was also a new exhibit on the possessions of the merchant class, which was pretty cool, although I don't know why I would want a tea bowl that cost that much if I were a merchant.
Then we went to the Tokugawa Gardens, which were significantly greener than they were last time I visited, but also had fewer flowers, weirdly enough.
We grabbed dinner at Pastel, aka that weird restaurant that only sells cake and pasta, and then I took my dad to Nagoya Station and said bye.
Upon returning to the dormitory, I discovered that Abbie had spent the entire semester saving one yen coins so she could go to the Lawson (convenience store) and buy a teriyaki burger using only one yen coins (one hundred five of them, to be exact).  It was potentially the most epic and trollish thing to ever occur in a convenience store.  The cashier at our register managed to get through the entire thing with a perfectly straight face, although the other cashier looked like he was going to die from holding in his laughter.  He was turning bright red, not even kidding.
ALSO, Ashley bought cell phone charms for all the pony girls and THEY ARE THE COLORS OF OUR PONIES AND WHY IS THIS SO GREAT.  Anyway, I have a tiny bell with a ribbon hanging from my cell phone now, and it is in Twilight Sparkle's colors and it is great.

Monday morning I woke up at an ungodly early hour to say goodbye to Meredith and Hali and Ashley, all of whom were leaving for the airport.  Then I saw an annullar eclipse, or, really, I tried to take pictures of it, failed, and then spotted the people across the street who actually had sun filters, and asked them politely if I could share.  Thank you, nice people across the street!  Anyway, it was amazing cool and I will be incredibly disappointed if I don't develop super powers.  And then after that I collapsed into bed and slept for a while, because I was running on four hours of sleep.

Tuesday was Kim and Louki's last day in the dorm, and due to a long and complicated blood pact, Kim had to watch an episode of Sherlock with me, so we (Abbie and Kim and Louki and I) did that.  And apparently I spent the entire episode grinning like an idiot, but, HEY, IT'S SHERLOCK AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME.
Then we went to Mountain, which is a sort of infamous restaurant by the dorm.  It is infamous because A. it has the largest serving sizes you have ever seen and B. it has the weirdest pasta you have ever seen, like green tea and red bean.  Yeah.  But I got a parfait so all was well!  Although my chocolate parfait had a prune in it, which was...odd.
And then we had a Roommate Dinner, which turned out to be more like a Roommate Plus a Whole Other Chunk of the Dorm Dinner, which was fine, because it meant that we got to hear about why not to be a politician in India and how the Netherlands doesn't have a government right now and other exciting things.

Today I woke up at an ungodly early hour to take Kim and Louki to Nagoya Station with Dheeraj and Grace, which was exciting even though all of us were sort of falling asleep.  (Okay, Grace was literally falling asleep.)  Once we saw them off, we fought through the sea of people who decided to ride the subway at rush hour (IT WAS AWFUL I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO DIE AUGH) and somehow managed to get back to the dorm without being crushed to death.
Also, I apologize if this post is more incoherent than usual 'cause I think I'm running on roughly three or four hours of sleep.  I'm coming down with something, which means that it feels like someone's been sandpapering my throat, so I kept waking up in the middle of the night and thus got lousy sleep.  Ugh.
Anyway, yeah, that's what I've been up to, basically.  I'm gonna go collapse and drink some more tea now.  Oh, and eat more of these crazy plum cough drops, which are the greatest thing I have ever found.

*My dad is allergic to shellfish, which is...problematic, if you live in a port town like Nagoya.

Recap: Bonfires, Tokugawa Garden, and Inuyama

Dear everybody who commented on the "lung" at a noodle place in the last post; that was a typo. It should have read "lunch."  To be fair, before that I wrote "dinner" and then in my half-asleep state realized that it didn't make sense to eat dinner twice.

...although I may or may not have eaten lung before in that sketchy "it has organs in it" meal.

But, no, no lung this time.  Yay, typos.

Also, HAPPY NEW YEAR by the lunar calendar.

ANYWAY, now that that has been cleared up, it is time for some more time travel,* back to Saturday, January 14, 2012.

Most shrines in Japan have a day about halfway through January when they burn a whole bunch of stuff from the previous year, like old omamori and ofuda and decorations that were used during the New Year, etc.  Saturday was Gosha Shrine's giant bonfire day, so Nick and I headed over there to check it out.

See that giant tarp full of stuff?  They were burning two of those.  (The stuff, not the tarp.)

There were a bunch of people who came early to clean up the shrine, which meant sweeping up all the leaves that had fallen.

These people were trying to break up the kagami mochi which had basically become as hard as a rock in the two weeks since the New Year.  They were using hammers and saws and chisels and some sort of cutting contraption (like a paper cutter but for cutting more intense things) and the kagami mochi was still winning.

So there was a short purification ceremony, but I was all the way in the back, so I couldn't see or hear much.  But after that was when they started burning things.

ALL THE THINGS.

Here's the kagami mochi, after they had managed to subdue it somewhat.

Then they cooked the kagami mochi.  And ate it.  Both in zenzai (a kind of sweet red bean soup) and on its own dipped in soy sauce and sugar.  DELICIOUS.

Meanwhile, lots of things were burning.

SO MANY THINGS.

They were using this bamboo pole to poke the fire...but it kept catching on fire...

Also, as we were all chilling, enjoying the fire, a group of guys walked past with a 25-30 foot bamboo pole and a hacksaw.  Apparently they were cutting down a bunch of bamboo which was growing on the side of the shrine, cutting off the offshoots (to throw in the fire) and then storing the bamboo by the side of the shrine office for...something.

More excitement occurred when Nakano-san, apparently seeing that many of the children wanted to throw things in the fire (despite their mothers' wishes) told all of them to write something on paper to burn in the fire, and so that their handwriting would become better.  Cue a mass exodus for papers and pens and very little interest in throwing other things in the fire.

That's kagami mochi cooking on the bonfire, if you couldn't tell.
Also, apparently eating the kagami mochi cooked on the fire (or with coals from the fire, in the case of the other picture) will keep you from getting sick for the rest of the year.

If you want more pictures of THINGS BURNING, Nick took about a million of them and posted them here.  He actually knows how to take pictures, so you should go check it out.

Anyway, after that we decided to hit Tokugawa Museum and Gardens, which was in Nick's guidebook.**  In any case, the museum was okay, although nothing to write home about.  They had a lot of really cool artifacts from the Edo period (1603-1868) and a big exhibit on swords, which I feel I would have gotten a lot more out of if I actually Knew Things about Swords.  It turned out, though, that entrance to the museum is free for Nanzan students, so yay for that.

After that, we wandered around the gardens for a little bit.

They had a thing for waterfalls while designing the gardens, apparently.

They also had a bunch of roses (or what I assume were rose-like flowers) blooming in little straw hut things...presumably to protect them from the cold.

THE KOI ARE COMIN' TO GET YOU.

These are winter sakura, which have been blooming all over the place.  They're really tiny, but still pretty.

...and this is not a very good picture of them.  Oh well.

Random spurts of water from between rocks!  I dunno.

So, yeah, that was the garden and museum and the end of our Saturday.

Sunday we decided to go exploring, so we took a train up to Inuyama, which is right at the edge of Aichi Prefecture.

You can see Gifu Prefecture right across the river.

This is the Kiso River, by the way, which is the sixth longest river in Japan, or so I have been told.

And that was our goal, Inuyama Castle, also known as the oldest castle in Japan.

I am not fascinated by strange rock formations in the water, I SWEAR.

There are a bunch of shrines all clustered at the bottom of the hill that the castle is on.

They were doing some sort of earthquake retrofitting, and so there were bracers up everywhere.

Yes, it is called "the pine tree of fate and the vagina rock."

*squints*

Nope, not seeing it.

This is not actually a hand-washing place, despite what it looks like. It's for washing your money.  If you wash your money here, it will multiply many times!  Or so the sign next to it said.

This is a rock which you are supposed to lift.  If it feels really heavy when you lift it, it means your wish won't be granted.  If it feels really light, your wish will be granted.

It was really heavy.
Oh well.
I guess I am screwed.

STAIRS.

This is sacred sand.

Or so the sign said.

Views from high places, Inuyama edition!

I like how what's written in Japanese is completely different than what's written in English.

In Japanese:

How to pray
Two bows  Bow deeply twice
Two claps  Clap twice
One bow    Bow deeply twice

SO SPECIFIC.

Apparently this was put together as part of a prayer day/festival for the victims of the earthquake and tsunami in March.

This may be one of the coolest sacred horses I have ever seen.

So then we went up to the castle.  When I went to buy our tickets, the woman at the ticket counter said that there was an English-speaking tour guide coming in just a few minutes if we wanted to wait for him.  I said I didn't need a tour guide, since I can read Japanese just fine, but Nick said he'd like to have one.

Big.

Mistake.

As it turned out, our English-speaking tour guide didn't...actually...speak English.  He was certainly very enthusiastic, but it was fairly clear that he didn't understand any questions Nick asked him in English.  He also couldn't actually give a tour in coherent English.  Much of his tour sounded a lot like, "Map!  Old map!  Map battlefield.  Sekigahara.  All battlefield map.  Wow!"  It was very unfortunate.  I feel like I could have given a better tour in Japanese without looking up any of the necessary vocabulary first.

BUT the castle was pretty cool, and we got a nice view from the top floor!

PEACH ON THE ROOF.  It's a guardian peach.  For fighting off demons.***

These stairs were TERRIFYING.  I thought I was going to die.  I am growing increasingly convinced that Japan is just excessively bad at stairs.

This is a tree which was REALLY OLD except then it was struck by lightning and died.  But it's now sacred because the tree was the exact same height as the turret of Inuyama Castle, so it took the hit instead of the castle.

This is a stele which was put up to honor the lord of the castle at the time of the Meiji Restoration, who refused to let the castle be destroyed, even though the Meiji government wanted to destroy all the castles and get rid of the old feudal system.

So then we went back down the hill and got lunch and I discovered the glory of nabe udon.  And then we found another shrine.

Oh, hey, a peace memorial!

...right next to a stone for remembering the glorious war dead.

HMM.

So then we went on a stroll through the town nearby, where we happened on a tiny temple:

You won't be senile!

It's a chair of passing tests!

It's a "definitely pass" Jizo!

So then we walked all the way across town to a bunch of temples on the mountainside.

There was a sort of hill + statue + garden thing as you climbed up the mountain.

We were pretty high up.

The big temple in the area had a big Buddha statue at the top of the mountain.

I think that the lines and lines of little Jizo down there are a mizuko memorial.  I'm not entirely sure, though.

Temple parking lot!

This is what happens when you try to sneakily take a picture of Nick.

They're gathered around two pots with burning incense.  At a fair number of temples they have purification by incense instead of purification by water.  I prefer water purification, even if it's really unpleasant in the winter, because it's significantly less likely to make me have an asthma attack.

I don't have an obsession with heights, I swear.

This was another temple to protect against senility.  This is a serious concern now that the population is aging.

Hey, look, it's a tiny shrine!

A tiny Inari shrine, to be precise.

I believe these statues represent a variety of different Buddhas and bodhisattvas as well as some prominent samurai from the area?  I should have taken a picture of the sign.

On our way back to the station, we passed this:

I assume it was the remains of a kagami mochi + mikan set-up from New Year's, but all that remained was an incredibly tiny mikan.  So sad.

So then we hopped on a train and rode back to Nagoya.  We had dinner at a pretty awesome tempura place by Kanayama station, which was really cheap AND had vegetarian options!  Very exciting.

The next morning I saw Nick off to the airport, although we had some excitement first when there was an earthquake (that neither of us noticed) and all the trains were delayed.  There was some minor freaking out, but in the end he made it to the airport ontime and there was much hugging goodbye and definitely no crying down shirts because we are tough like RAWR.

And thus ends my adventures with the S-As.  It was fun, guys!  We should do it again!

*Emily asked for more Doctor Who, so she gets it...sort of.

**Which, it should be noted, described Nagoya as "gray."

***The story goes that after Izanagi seriously ticked off his dead wife by looking at her maggot-infested body (long story) she decided to send the armies of the underworld after him.  After a long and somewhat convoluted chase scene in which he threw various articles of clothing at them (which turned into grapes that they stopped to eat) he grabbed three peaches and fought of the hordes of the underworld with them. Because he could.

I feel like maybe I should do a post on the Kojiki at some point.  I'm not sure that would make anything make any more sense, though.