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.

あけましておめでとうございます

First off, happy New Year, everyone!  Today's post will be kind of scatter-brained and probably full of typos because we have walked about 25 miles in the past three days and I am excessively exhausted.

First off

...this is a sign from Oasis 21.  Because it is an 「Aqua spaceship」.  Please acknowledge it.

Also, there was this random group of girls performing there when we went.

Anyway, Friday!

We decided to go on a really long walk to a bunch of shrines in my area.

But first we went to Yagoto Cemetery, which is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge cemetery.

Where one of the gravestones had a family seal which appeared to be a Triforce symbol?

Then we went to Gosha Shrine.

Where the New Year's decorations had been put up.

Also, I got to teach Nick and Miranda how to pray at a shrine.  It was very exciting.  Which is to say that Miranda thought that it was way too much fun.

I was supposed to take a picture of this for Miranda and Nick.  I DUNNO WHY.

So this was our lunch-like meal.  Japanese bakeries = amazing.

To be fair, not all of those are pastries.  We are not completely ridiculous people.

...okay, maybe we are.

So then we went to Koshouji, which is a big temple in the area that I have somehow managed to not go to despite living here for three months?

There were these extremely exciting cutouts, so we took pictures.

I look really creepy in this picture.

Also, as it turned out, our glasses were just wide enough that we couldn't actually stick our heads in the holes.  AWKWARD.

So then we climbed up a bunch of steps, to where they had the bell they were going to ring for New Years.*

Miranda decided to try to ring it.  (You're allowed to ring it at any time, just to be clear. It's just that it's also rung at New Year's.)

She thought that was way too much fun too.

Also, as it turns out, the temple has a spot for mizuko,** which is what I'm reading about now.

They also had a pet cemetery.

So then we went to Susanoo Shrine and Kawahara Shrine and Ikatsu Hachimangu and it was basically a whole lot of walking.  And then we went to the weird pasta and cake place for dinner, where we discovered that two of their cakes have meat in them?  That was exciting.

Also, on New Year's you're supposed to offer kagami mochi (a kind of mochi) with a mikan on top to the kami, but this is a kind of cheap equivalent made of plastic.

Also, this New Year's decoration was hanging in front of the door to my dorm.

So that was Friday!

Saturday!

We decided to go to Atsuta Shrine, where they had already decorated for New Year's.

Here's a place they had set up where you could drop off your ofuda and omamori from the last year for ritual burning.

This is a really cool ema we found. I think it might be hand-made, because we couldn't find any others.

Here are some extra offices they had set up to sell ofuda and omamori and omikuji during the New Year's festivities.

Oh, hey, this looks familiar.

CHICKENS.

So then we headed over to Susanoo Shrine for their Ooharai.  It was a very short ceremony (16 minutes).  In addition to the norito, we wrote our names on little people-shaped slips of paper, blew on them three times, pressed them to any parts of our bodies which were hurting and/or worrying us, and then passed them over to Nakano-san for ritual burning.  There were a total of ten attendants, so about twice as many as usual, although Nick and Miranda were two, two were a Japanese couple visiting from Australia who apparently used to live in the area, and two were the husband and son of one of the regular attendents.  So we didn't actually have any randoms from the community.

Theeeeeeeeeen we went over to Kawahara Shrine's Ooharai, which was much longer and better attended.  There were probably 30+ people there (I didn't count them so I don't know for sure), although I would say that the average age was 65 or so.  (The average age at Susanoo, not counting us gaijin, was probably 40.)  Most of the people seemed to know each other, which seems reasonable, given that I didn't see any signs advertising the event (unlike at Susanoo), so the people who came are those most involved with the shrine.  It was fairly obvious that the ceremony was geared toward people who normally attend ceremonies as well, because at Susanoo Shrine, Nakano-san calls out, "Please bow your head" or "Please stand up" or "Please sit down" at various points in the ceremony, whereas at Kawahara, everyone knew when to bow or stand up or sit down so no one announced it.
Also, the means of purification at Kawahara were two shide attached to a stick slightly thicker than a coffee stirrer, which you were supposed to flick over your left then right then left shoulder.

Afterwards we had a nice chat with Itou-san, which is to say that I translated back and forth and managed not to botch anything up too badly.  As we were leaving, they were preparing the giant bonfire for the evening, but unfortunately it turned out that it wasn't going to be lit until 10 or 11 that evening. Oh well.

I would have gone to a midnight shrine visit, but given that I had to wake up at 7 a.m. this morning, that would have meant getting 6 (or fewer***) hours of sleep, which was probably a very bad idea.  So that didn't happen.  Oh well.  I'm kind of sad about it (okay, I'm pretty bummed), but I think it was for the best.  There will be other years, preferably ones where I can sleep in late the next morning.

Today!  It was New Years!  So I went down to Susanoo Shrine (and dragged Nick and Miranda with me) to help out with their New Year's ceremony.  We arrived at 9 a.m., but there were already people visiting the shrine for hatsumoude (first visit to a shrine/temple of the year).  One of the women brought her six-year-old son, so Nick and Miranda got to be semi-babysitters and learned Japanese from him.  Exciting.  Meanwhile, I filled sake and water containers and arranged the rice and salt offerings, helped prepare the ozenzai (a kind of sweet bean soup), passed out the ozenzai to people who came to the shrine (and got to use super fancy speech at them), and helped out with other random things.  I also got to watch the people who came to the shrine, and discovered that everyone came in groups of one, three, or four.  With the exception of one couple who met at the shrine, there were no couples who came, and the groups of three and four always included a child (so they were two parents and a child, a grandparent and two children, two parents and grandparent and a child, two parents and two children, etc.).  Some of them (usually the older people) knew the other people helping out at the shrine and would stop in for a chat, but a lot of them obviously didn't know the shrine-affiliated people.  (And some of them didn't even know the shrine.  One of the women who was visiting pulled the woman helping me hand out ozenzai aside and asked her in an undertone how to read the kanji of the shrine.  Oops.)

Nakano-san showed up at 11 with her two daughters (and announced that we had screwed and we didn't actually need the alcohol-water-rice-sake offerings ALL MY BEAUTIFUL WORK FOR NOTHING), and we all went on the stage for a short New Year's ceremony.  There was the basic purification followed by a norito about the New Year and then Nakano-san's daughters performed kagura.  It was short (and made shorter by the freezing cold, because Nakano-san told everyone to go pay their respects on their own at the auxiliary shrines rather than performing separate ceremonies for them).
Afterwards we grilled mochi on top of the space heaters and dropped it into the ozenzai.  SO TASTY.
(We also cleaned up a bunch of stuff, but that's not very exciting to write about.)
Anyway, by then it was almost 1 p.m., so Nick and Miranda and I headed back to my dorm so I could put on warmer clothes.  But first I discovered that I got NEW YEAR'S CARDS FROM OTHER FULBRIGHTERS!  SO EXCITING!

So then we headed over to Nagoya Station, because Itou-san told us it was probably a good idea to get our tickets to go to Kyoto ahead of time, because the trains might be really crowded.  So we did that, and then we decided to try to find food, which would up being very exciting, because apparently Japan on New Year's is more Land of the Dead-ish than the US on Christmas.

Seriously, I was just waiting for the zombies to show up.

Anyway, we finally found a CoCo Ichibanya that was open (it's a curry place).  And Nick decided to get the spiciest possible curry, because he is Nick.

I would click on the image to read the text, because it's kind of hilarious.
When the waitress brought him the dish, she wished him good luck.
He actually admitted that it was spicy and turned bright red and drank a whole lot of water.  I tried a spoonful, and I would compare the experience to having a fireball shoot down my throat.  Not something I would consider pleasant, but, hey.

Meanwhile, the rest of the station mall was still the zombie mall.

We found this kind of awkward Engrish on top of a fish tank.  Yay?

So that was our day.

I probably could have done more fieldwork today.  Well, actually, I definitely could have done more fieldwork today. I also could have done more fieldwork yesterday.  I could have not slept at all.  But I feel like that would have been a pretty miserable way to spend New Year's.  I got in a good 4 hours of fieldwork today, which I think is pretty good, considering that I have people visiting me (and if I had done the maximum possible amount of fieldwork, it would have involved either making them walk really far differences and then stand off alone while I ran around like a maniac or just leaving them alone for today).  And now I'm so exhausted that I want to just collapse into bed and sleep forever, but I have to wait for my dryer to finish ugh.  Why do Japanese dryers take SO LONG?
Anyway, happy New Year, everybody.  良いお年を。

*It's rung 108 times to signify the cleansing of the 108 sins of humanity.

**Souls of aborted, miscarriaged, and stillborn fetuses.

***I've heard way too many horror stories about waiting in line for three or four hours just to pray.