A lot of lasts

...well, this post was going to be up a lot sooner, but then Blogger decided to delete my mostly finished post.  Entirely.  THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR, BLOGGER.  NOT ACCEPTABLE AT ALL.  So, yeah, guh, this is me trying to reconstruct this post while packing and getting ready to head back to the States.  Wheeee.

新しい原稿を書き終わったけど、コンピューターは死んでしまって、原稿を完全になくしてしまった。いやだああああああ。;_;  もう一度書かなきゃ。。。

So last Tuesday was Susanoo Shrine's tsukinamisai plus the summer festival.  Even though there was a lot more to do in terms of set up (there were about twice as many offerings as usual), there were a lot more people attending than usual, so I wound up running around like a headless chicken quite a bit less than usual.

先週の火曜日に須佐之男神社の月次祭と夏祭りが行われた。読んでいる皆さんはたぶんもう祭りについてよく知っているから、説明のほとんどを和訳しない。（それと、全部翻訳するのは時間かかる。>.>）

Sekihara-san's husband is making a website for the shrine, and he wanted photographs of the festival, so I got drafted to take pictures, because I am "good at taking photos."  Um.  Well then.

私は祭りの写真家になることになった。「写真が上手だ」からだ。どうかな。。。

Anyway, pictures:

All the attendees...  There weren't enough chairs, so I was lurking in the back.

参拝者。いすは足りなかったから、私は後ろに立っていた。

Everyone carrying the offerings to the inner altar...

This is what the offerings look like, by the way.  The three trays on the right are for the mountain kami, who is enshrined in a separate building.

So because it was the summer festival, the norito was much longer than usual.  Before the festival started, Nakano-san collected the names of everyone attending, and she read them off as part of the norito.  There are few words I can use to describe how it felt to hear my name in there.  My first reaction was that I really wanted to giggle, because my name sounds pretty friggin' ridiculous in among a bunch of Japanese names.  (Actually, let's be honest; my name is pretty ridiculous even without Japanese names to compare it to.)  My second reaction was, "WOW.  WOW, THIS IS ACTUALLY REAL."  I can't express how grateful I am to everyone at Susanoo Shrine for accepting me into the shrine community and putting me up with my strange questions and my stuttering and my folding papers the wrong way (I swear I have it right now!).  Not only was attending the monthly festivals good for research, it was just generally a great experience.  (You have no idea how calming it is to prepare offerings.  Repetitive actions are a great destressor, let's be honest.)

ちょっとだけ祝詞について話したいと思う。祭りの前に中野宮司さんは参加者の名前を集めた。今年、色々な神社で見学したり、神職の話に聞かせてくれたりしたけれど、どんな神社でも「ありがたい」という概念について話が出た。中野宮司さんが祝詞を読んでいて、私の名前が祝詞の中に出ていた時、本当に「ありがたい」という気持ちがよく分かってきた。学者の本を読むと、神社で色々な見学の問題に関する話が出てしまう。「色々な許可が必要だった。」「一部分の祭りしか見させなかった。」「見学の前に六ヶ月も待たなければならなかった。」が、私は外国人なのに、有名な教授じゃないのに、日本語が下手なのに、いつも変な質問していたのに、須佐之男神社で見学させていただいた。色々な話を聞かせていただいた。言えないほどありがたい。研究の上で、精神的にすばらしい経験だった。須佐之男神社の皆さん、真にありがとうございます。m(_ _)m

Offering tamagushi!  All the people in chairs got to offer tamagushi individually, and those of us who were standing prayed with the last person.

Offering tamagushi is not that hard, but a lot of people don't know how to do it properly.
Step 1: Take the tamagushi from the priest.  Bow as you do so.
Step 2: Approach the altar.
Step 3: Turn the tamagushi clockwise 90 degrees.  The stick should be pointing toward you and the leafy bit should be pointing toward the top.
Step 4: Grip the leafy bit with your right hand and then turn the tamagushi 180 degrees before placing it on the altar.
Step 5: Bow twice, clap twice, bow once. <-- this is the praying bit
Step 6: Take a small step backward and then bow (slightly!) once more before backing away from the altar.
Step 7: Bow to the priest and then sit.
...okay, maybe it's a bit more complicated than I originally thought...

(上述した英語は玉串の説明だ。複雑でしょう。）

That was the end of the main ceremony, so then we went to the shrine for the mountain kami to perform the ceremony there.

次は山の神様の祭りだった。

I was way in the back, so my pictures are not all that great.
Also, when I showed Sekihara-san the pictures I took, her first response was, "MY HUSBAND'S SHIRT IS GLOWING!"  (It kind of is.)

And offering tamagushi again...

And that was the end of that!

終わり。

So then everyone trooped inside...

Festivals usually involve hauling a lot of tables.

Next were the festivals for the kami enshrined in shrines in the shrine office.

次は社務所の中に祭られている神様の祭りだった。

By the way, that photograph over Nakano-san's head is from the Meiji era.  This shrine is OLD.

...so that was the end of that.  My camera died immediately after the festival, because it is a pro like that.  I seriously think I need to get a new battery or something, because this is getting kind of ridiculous.

After the ceremony, we had naorai and I got to eat delicious bento and listen to cool stories, because apparently this is my month to eat delicious bento and listen to cool stories.
...also, apparently Nakano-san's daughter saw pictures of me in priest garb and declared me "cool." WHAAAAAAAT.
Also also, I saw a goshintai, which is the object that is actually enshrined as a symbol of the kami. You're not normally supposed to see it, but there's some construction going on at the shrine (I believe a fence is being repaired?) so Nakano-san had to take the goshintai out of the mountain kami's shrine and she showed it to me, because she wasn't entirely sure what was in the box.  So, yeah, this year has been the year of me seeing all sorts of things I'm not normally supposed to see.  (That sentence wound up sounding a lot sketchier than I intended it to.)

祭りの後で直会があって、皆の話に聞かせてくれたり、美味しい弁当をいただいたりした。

So, yeah, that was my last tsukinamisai at Susanoo Shrine.  I'm going to miss everyone, and I'm going to miss heading over on the 17th to fill sake containers (Did you know that if you accidentally spill sake on your watchband, your watchband will smell like sake approximately forever?) and listen to really cool stories and wipe down trays.

その後でレポートを書くために帰った。
毎月１７日に須佐之男神社にいって、祭りの準備を少しだけでも手伝ったり、面白い話を聞かせたり、皆さんと一緒に祭りに参加したりして、本当によかった。帰国しても、皆さんの優しさを忘れないよ。;_;


The next day was my last penmanship class!  I was actually kind of sad, 'cause only one other woman came...but then after class A WHOLE SLEW OF PEOPLE showed up, because apparently Nakano-san contacted everyone who had taken class with me and said, "Dana's leaving, so you better come if you want to say goodbye to her."  Oh gosh, you guys, I love you all.
...also, I got a lot of (super thoughtful and sweet) presents and I was super embarrassed and stuttered a lot and may have kind of cried a little and GOSH.  GOSH.

次の日、最後の習字稽古があった。私以外に一人の学生しか来なくて、ちょっと悲しかったけれど、昼ご飯にたくさんの人が来てくれて、本当に嬉しかった。ちょっと恥ずかしかったけれど、皆さんと一緒に昼ご飯を食べたり、話したり、皆さんから贈り物をもらったり（本当にありがとうございます！）するのは泣くほど嬉しかった。言葉が出なくなることがいっぱいあっても、皆さんより若くても、友達が出来て、本当に嬉しかった。

ANYWAY, ENOUGH TALKING ABOUT FEELINGS; HAVE SOME PICTURES OF MY LOUSY CALLIGRAPHY:


自分の気持ちについて語りすぎたから、写真を見て：

This is actually from the week before; I just forgot to take a picture before...

二週間前の習字だけど。。。

And this is from this week...
It's pretty embarrassing that I've been writing hiragana for 5 1/2 years now and this is how good my handwriting is.  OUCH.

先週の習字！
五年間以上ひらがなを書いたのに、そんなに下手。。。

WAIT WAIT WAIT, is this ACTUALLY PRETTY OKAY CALLIGRAPHY?  Yes, yes, it is.  Nakano-san was in the other room while I was writing this and she came back and said, "WHOA, your corners just got weirdly good!"

これは。。。下手じゃないかな？

...anyway, my last last for this post is that last Thursday was my last Japanese class.  (I used "last" a whole lot in that sentence.  HMM.)  It wasn't as sad as it could have been, because I'm seeing some of my classmates again on Saturday (we're planning on going to the Toyota City Fireworks Festival).

木曜日に最後の日本語の授業があった。今週の土曜日に豊田市の花火祭りでクラスメートをもう一度会う予定があるので、そんなに悲しくなかった。

...so that's all the news for this time.  Next post will be about my trip to Misogi Shrine last Sunday. (Gosh, I am so far behind, and I am going to get farther behind, because I need to finish packing and cancel a bunch of stuff and ahhhhhh busy.)

次回：みそぎ神社

I'm bad at updating; what else is new?

Hey, guys.

This is not a real update, but rather just saying HI I AM ALIVE AND MY DAD IS VISITING AND I HAVE TO WRITE A THING FOR THE CHUBU FULBRIGHT ALUMNI ASSOCIATION WHICH IS EITHER SEVERAL SENTENCES OR A FEW PAGES* AND I SPENT TWO HOURS GOING OVER SUSANOO SHRINE'S FINANCES YESTERDAY** WHICH WAS UNEXPECTED BUT NOT BAD*** AND ALSO I AM REALLY TIRED BUT HANDBOOK UGH COHERENT SENTENCES GONE sklalkreakjreau

Real updates coming when real updates come.

*I asked for clarification and the clarification made it even less clear than it originally was, if that's possible.

**Apparently, at some point when I wasn't paying attention, I went from being "that weird kid who keeps hanging out at the shrine and asking weird questions" to "that weird kid who is competent enough to allow to help out" to "that weird kid who knows what she is doing and we are relying on her to actually be a member of this community and we are okay with her seeing our financial records and talking about serious stuff in front of her."  I am...actually pretty okay with this.  I am more concerned about other people not being okay with me.

***Actually it was really good, 'cause I had a bunch of questions about stuff having to do with the neighborhood association, and I didn't even have to ask them because they all came up.  YES, serendipity.

Come at me, disasters

I'm pretty bad at updating, 'cause I have too much going on in my life or whatever.  EXCUSES.

Let's see if I can quickly recap what's been going on in my life.

Tuesday morning was the monthly festival (tsukinamisai) at Susanoo Shrine.  I hadn't been able to go for the past three months because of one thing or another (well, graduate school application deadline, food poisoning, and being in Tokyo respectively), so it was nice to see everyone again.  I...hadn't forgotten everything either!  And I got to fold paper for the offering trays and apparently was proclaimed a genius because even though I was shown how to fold the paper from the bottom corner up, I was able to make the exact same shape from the top corner down.  Um.  I'd call that basic spatial awareness, not genius, but whatever.
Also, Nakano-san offered to take me to a fire purification festival that's performed at Misogi Shrine, about 3 hours by car from Nagoya.  It's very unusual, because most fire purification ceremonies are performed at temples, not shrines.  Her husband works at the shrine, and she apparently goes up there a fair amount, so she offered to take me the next time she goes up.  Pretty exciting!

Tuesday evening I had Japanese class, where we read about how people are giving their children ridiculously difficult to read names.  This won't mean anything to anyone who doesn't speak Japanese, but some names in the article included: 結愛（ゆあ）, 明日（ともろう）, 笑（えりく）, 香魚（かな）, 夢紅（むく）, and, my personal favorite, 響（りずむ）.  WHO THE HECK NAMES THEIR KID THAT?  That's just cruel.

After class, we had a nomikai with the foreign freshmen and Tuesday sensei*.  It was pretty fun, although it quickly degenerated to learning swear words in foreign languages.  I know now some swear words in Chinese!  Yay?  Also, one of the freshmen is Mexican, and was trying to teach everyone cusses in Spanish, but finally one of the Chinese boys asked, "Can't you cuss at people without involving their parents?"  Ahahaha, it's kind of true.

Anyway, Wednesday morning I had penmanship class, where, funnily enough, we had a long discussion about people naming their children ridiculous things.
Also, I practiced writing this:

I hope you are super impressed by that heart radical.  It took me...FOREVER.

Anyway, Wednesday afternoon everyone in the dorm had a mandatory disaster drill, because, you know, almost all the foreign students are leaving in a month and it would really suck if a disaster occurred in the next month and they didn't know how to deal with it.  Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh.  Anyway, you would think that a disaster drill would only take...oh, an hour, right?  I mean, there are only so many disasters that can occur.  We aren't near active volcanoes or anything...  But, no, it took 3 hours.  THREE.  HOURS.  Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

After that everyone wanted to throw themselves out of windows, but we couldn't find any appropriate windows so instead a bunch of us went to all-you-can-eat pizza again (and I, once again, failed at eating pizza but ate a million pounds of eggplant pasta; it was AMAZING).

Today I had Japanese class in the evening, and we learned some crazy shortened words.  In Japanese, a lot of borrowed words are simply too long to use in daily speech (plus, Japanese is all about making words shorter than they already are), so words get shortened.  Like air conditioner becomes eakon.  And Starbucks becomes sutaba.  See how many of these words you can figure out (all of them are shortened forms of commonly used English words or phrases**):
1. pasokon
2. rimokon
3. meruado
4. kaanabi
5. santora
6. furima
7. kopipe
8. ama
9. infure
10. shinse
Hint: 1-7 are two or more words mashed into one, while 8-10 is a single word which has had the second half chopped off.
If you speak Japanese and can figure out 9 OR if you don't speak Japanese*** and can figure out 6...I'll give you a prize or something, I guess.  OH MAN, PRESSURE'S ON NOW.  It should be noted that we have a native speaker tutor in our class, and she couldn't figure out some of these.  So they're not easy.  And, no, it won't work to put them through Google translate.  You have to think about it.  You can work in teams if you want, just as long as you are working as a team, not just mooching off some poor soul.

So, yeah, that's what I've been up to!

*Although now I guess he's We Don't Take Class with You sensei.  IT'S SO CONFUSING.  Monday sensei is now Thursday sensei and Thursday sensei is Tuesday sensei.  I don't know what to believe.

**I could have thrown in some German to be a jerk, but I'm not a jerk.  Aren't you happy I'm not a jerk?

***For those of you who want to try this but don't speak Japanese, all vowels are pronounced like in Spanish.  R is pronounced like a cross between an L and an R and is used for either sound in English.  A double A is pronounced like a normal A, just twice the length.  Everything else should be intuitively obvious.

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.