Gosha Shrine's summer festival

Heeeeeeey, everyone.  It is grossly hot here.  It is so hot that I am literally dripping in sweat.  There is literally swear dripping off me.  IT IS DISGUSTING.

Anyway, have some random purikura pictures from a million years ago (I'm really unclear on why Blogger highlights things randomly):

(These were taken during Louki's birthday.  Someone had the smart idea of picking the ~sparkly eyes~ setting, which, uh, made our eyes sparkly.  These are some of the less disturbing results.)

(Also, for anyone who can't read Japanese, our names are written on our foreheads, so we have:
Meredith (purple), Gitari (pink; that's his nickname), Ashley (light blue), Grace (blue), Hali (yellow), me (green), Louki (red), and Mariko (dark purple-ish).)

(Also, I totally stole this picture from Mariko because I am a THIEF.)

ANYWAY, Sunday was the summer festival at Gosha Shrine!  And I am all about summer festivals, so I headed on over.

Fortunately, it wasn't raining!
Unfortunately, that meant it was about a million degrees at 8:30 in the morning and everyone just wanted to go home and hide in dark holes.

A bunch of stands were already set up when I arrived:

They had a stand selling a bunch of used clothes and dishes and books.

Taikoooooo.

This, by the way, is the shrine office where I have calligraphy class!  And since the doors were open, you can now see the beautiful interior~

There was a short purification ceremony that mostly only the soudai and the performers participated in, and then a girl sang a song and then Nakano-san's daughters (who are the shrines' miko) performed a dance.

And then the main performances started.

Taiko!

So this was at about ten in the morning.  As you can probably tell, it was CROWDED.

The next group of performers were a bunch of little girls from a baton-twirling school.

They were kind of adorable, in the way that small children who never turn the correct way generally are.

There was also a group of older girls who were performing.

(This was the oldest group of girls.)

Tambourines are batons, right?

And then the little kids came back with pom-poms...

This was literally all that I could think of...

The next group of performers was a storytelling troupe...

They set up a tent so that they wouldn't die in the baking sun.

Unfortunately, their entire audience was dying in the baking sun instead...

Unfortunately, they were having some serious microphone feedback issues...

They told the story of Susanoo and Yamato no Orochi and also the story of Okuninushi and the rabbit.  Definitely the best version of the Yamato no Orochi story I've ever heard.  It was so exciting!  (Apparently I was one of the few people who actually enjoyed it, 'cause a bunch of middle schoolers told Nakano-san that it was boring.  Ohhhh dear.)

One of the older women at the festival turned to me after the story was over and said, "...are you actually interested in these kinds of stories?" to which I had to respond, "YES," because who ISN'T into stories about Susanoo fighting a giant dragon with his future-wife-turned-into-a-comb in his hair?

So then I bummed around the shrine for a bit longer, talked to some people, and got some ice cream so I didn't die of heatstroke did research on festival food.

A bunch of kids were shooting each other with water pistols, much to Nakano-san's consternation.

These kids are super ball fishing, which is the more animal-friendly version of goldfish fishing.

This random guy was selling vegetables...?

These kids were selling homegrown grilled corn.

...this was the line for ice cream.

It was really hot, okay?

Aaaand here's the front of the shrine, where all the special lanterns were hanging.

So, yeah, that was the festival!

On Tuesday it was Pay 1,000 Yen for Movies Day, so I went to see the new Spiderman movie!  It was interesting.  I feel like there were some things that were definitely better than the old version, but there were things that were definitely worse.  It's much closer to the original canon, which...isn't...necessarily...a good thing.  I also feel like it didn't come together as well as the old version, 'cause there were some things that were giant question marks at the beginning and still giant question marks at the end.  Gwen is kind of amazing, though (although I have a lot of FEELINGS about her last scene, bah).

I had calligraphy class yesterday, and Itou-san dropped by,* which led to the largest concentration of Shinto-nerding I have ever seen in a small single room.  We had a big, long discussion about how kids weren't considered human until they turned 7 in the Edo period, and how that led to a lot of interesting stuff like legal infanticide and shortened funerals for kids.  Hurrah for interesting discussions!

And then I went home and submitted all my papers for Fulbright except for my research paper, which is 15.5k and still growing uggggggh.  I need to turn it in within the next week, so I'm just trying to clean up what I have right now and hoping that it turns into something semi-coherent.  I think right now I'm only missing the conclusion and some transitions in the middle, so it's not a huge amount of work left...

In final news, remember how I decided to fly out of Tokyo so that A) I could have my exit interview face-to-face rather than over the phone (I HATE PHONE CALLS, especially extended ones; it's so hard for me to figure out what's being said without being able to see the other person) and B) I could FINALLY go see the Ghibli Museum?  Well, within the last 24 hours I just found out that Dr. Satterwhite, who does the exit interviews, will not be available when I was planning on being in Tokyo, so I have to do a phone interview, AND that the Ghibli Museum is sold out of tickets until mid-August.  AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH.  Excuse me while I flip over the UNIVERSE.  I am fairly sure that I am going to wind up going to the Ghibli Museum when I'm a million years old at this rate.  WHY?  WHYYYYYY?  So now I'm trying to figure out when to go up to Tokyo.  BAH.
</drama>

Well, I should get back to my paper...gosh...

*Why she dropped by is a long story involving a guy giving her a bunch of calligraphy sets years and years ago and telling her to give them to foreign students...?  Oh, and then she's supposed to take a picture when she gives them to the foreign students and send him a picture so that he knows that the set is going to a good home.  And apparently she hasn't managed to pawn all of them off yet, so when she found out that I've been taking calligraphy she was like, "YOU ARE TAKING ONE OF THESE."  So I got a calligraphy set!  Thank you, mysterious benefactor man!


EDIT: Oh my gosh, I just went to check keywords people have used to find my blog, and, uh:

"break up with boyfriend to become fulbright scholar"

I'm crying from laughter here.  Why was someone searching that...?  DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MY QUOTE ON THE TECH HOUSE QUOTES PAGE?  'CAUSE IT'S NOT TRUE, YOU GUYS.

Giant Tokyo picture dump

Heeeeey, guys.  I'm back in Nagoya now!  Finally!  So now I can upload all those pictures I said I would and work on the presentation I have to give next week post them here like a boss.

...this is calligraphy from a million years ago that apparently I never bothered to take off my camera.  OOPS.

LOOK AT THAT HEART RADICAL.  I SUFFERED OVER IT, SO YOU BETTER BE IMPRESSED.

This is what it looks like when you try to take a picture of an annullar eclipse!

Which is to say that it looks exactly like the sun.

Oops.

Anyway, Tokyo!

Here's Yushima Tenmangu:

There was a festival going on, so all sorts of stands were lining the street...

Apparently this touch-screen-at-the-shrine thing is a THING in Tokyo.

This is a kind of adorable fortune-dispensing machine.  And you can pick whether you want a normal fortune or a lurve fortune!

There was a taiko performance going on in the parking lot for the festival.  They were SO ENERGETIC and fun to watch.

There was also a bonsai exhibit going on!

The shrine has a nice little garden on the grounds too!

These people were performing as well, although they weren't as energetic as the taiko team.

Mikoshi!  They were lined up on the streets for the procession, so I got to take a bunch of pictures of them!

Shishi!  These are the lion-dog heads that people wear during festivals, kind of like the lions used in Chinese lion dances.

A festival staple, goldfish fishing!  I've done it before.  Japanese goldfish are kind of adorably bug-eyed.

Here're the shishi from the side!

Look at the amount of detail on this thing.

No, seriously, look at the detail.

Street vendors!

Horses!  For people to ride during the procession.

This is carved into the gates of the shrine, since the cow is a common symbol of Tenjin.

Weapons and staffs, all prepared for the procession...

...I have no idea what this is a picture of.  A snake and...another animal????

Tiny mikoshi!  (This one was supposed to be carried by kids.)

DETAILS.

These guys were readying a drum to haul around.

LOOK AT THE AMOUNT OF DETAIL THERE IS IN THAT CARVINGGGGGG.

Here are a bunch of guys getting ready to march with the mikoshi!

This is apparently what ice cream was like in the 40s and 50s in Japan.  It was good, but not at all like normal ice cream--the consistency was more like sherbet.

Anyway, after that they all carried the mikoshi off to circle the neighborhood...  Each mikoshi had a separate route.

I ran into this group as I was heading toward the subway station!

So that was Yushima Tenmangu.

My next stop was Hie Shrine.

STAIRS.

STAIRS.

STA- wait, what?

...yes, that is an escalator leading up to the shrine.

Here's the main entrance to the shrine!  I opted to wander around the outside of the complex before going in, though.

Apparently their Inari shrine is behind this fence topped with barbed wire...?  I dunno.

Apparently Shinyo Maritime Corporation donated some of the funds for this torii!

Climbing down the stairs...

Climbing back up the stairs...

(I may have seen this and burst into sudden, irrational laughter.  Too much Sherlock on the brain.)

So then I headed into the main shrine gate!

This ema has nothing to do with crabs.

 Bamboo!

There was a wedding going on while I was there, which was exciting.

So then I headed over to Yoyogi Park!

This is right in the middle of Tokyo.

There's a pond!

And a rose garden!

These are possibly the weirdest colored roses I've ever seen.

So many beautiful roses!

There were also a lot of people chilling and enjoying the beautiful weather!

This statue cracks me up.  The guy and lady are so serious, and the kid is like, "OMG SO BORED LET'S NOT SIT HERE."

Anyway, that was Saturday!

On Sunday I took the train to Ueno Park, where I visited the Tokyo National Museum, which might be one of my favorite museums ever!

These are legitimately the best guardians I've ever seen.  (There are twelve of them, each representing a different year of the Chinese zodiac.)

LOOK AT HOW MUCH ATTITUDE THEY HAVE.

The one of the far right in the front, incidentally, is the one for the horse, and thus is my guardian, I guess!

I apologize for the semi-horrific picture quality; my camera was being a pain.

Meanwhile:

Hey, look, a sword!

...oh, Oda Nobukatsu, you were SUCH a people person.

MEANWHILE, in the bathroom:

...I don't even know.

MEANWHILE:

...is it just me, or does this helmet totally look like it has a bunch of leeks strapped to it?

So, yeah, I spent way too many hours at the museum, saw a bunch of cool artifacts, and then headed back to my hostel to pack up for OKINAWA~  Which will be next post.