大雪

HOLY SHOOT, TWO POSTS IN ONE DAY.

Let me recap the excitement of the past few days.

On Tuesday I headed over to Ueno Tenmangu to interview Handa-san, who is the head priest there.  We talked for almost two hours and he was very helpful and gave me a bunch of good information.  The situation at Ueno Tenmangu is very  different than at the other shrines I've been looking at, because it has no ujiko, no real community built around the shrine, and gains most of its revenue by performing ceremonies and selling omamori (as opposed to donations from the local community).  Anyway, lots of things to think about.  I'm hoping to get into contact with some priests from of the other shrines in the area to see if they're seeing the same sort of trade-off between commercialization and community.

I've been meeting some of the other people in the dorm, thanks to Louki.  I have also been introduced to Dutch cuisine?  Apparently chocolate sprinkles on buttered bread is an incredibly common food in the Netherlands.  Louki was horrified that I'd never had it before.  Of course, she'd never had pocky before*, so there's been a lot of introduction to foreign cuisine all around.
Also, I am no longer the absolute worst at Mario Kart, because Louki, somehow, is even worse than I am.  We were playing with two of the other girls from the dorm, and they were consistently getting in the top 3, whereas we were battling for eleventh.  WE ARE THE GREATEST AT VIDEO GAMES.

We got 15 centimeters of snowfall in Nagoya today, which basically shut the entire city down.  There were 800 traffic accidents and something like 45 injuries (plus an additional 24 injuries just from people who injured themselves by WALKING**).  I had to go to the post office to mail something, and it was really eerie, because NOBODY was out.  There were no cars on the streets, very few people were on the sidewalks...it was like the snow was actually a zombie apocalypse or something.  SO WEIRD.

Here, have some pictures of snow!

This was the view out my window shortly after I woke up...

Here's the street leading from my dorm to Nanzan.

The main road by the subway station...  There was a guy walking in the street because it had less snow than the sidewalk and there weren't any cars...

OH MY GOSH A CAR ON THE ROAD

This guy was shoveling snow...in a suit.  Yeah.  He was really not dressed appropriately. He didn't even have boots.  He looked very miserable about the whole situation.

I get to climb this hill EVERY DAY.

It was twice as much fun in the snow.

Whoo.

When I got back to the dorm, Louki and her friend Kim were outside making a snowman, so I joined them.

It was the best snowman.
Also, the dorm caretaker helped us with the eyes.  (We couldn't get the marbles to stick, so he gouged holes in the head for us with his keys.)

Also, Louki kept calling it a "snow doll" because apparently that's what they're called in Dutch.  In Japanese they're "snow daruma."

The rest of the pictures are from about four in the afternoon, when I got sick of reading about popular education and decided to wander around the Nanzan campus in the snow for a while.  The snow had already started melting unfortunately, but there was still a fair amount.

There were.

So many.

Snowmen.

Snowman #2!

#3!

...I'm not actually sure what this is.

Another one!

And another!

And yet another!

So much snow!

Some of the snowmen had just sort of turned into snow lumps...

ICICLES.

So tomorrow is Setsubun, which means that there will be SO MANY BEANS FLYING.  I'm planning on attending three festivals (one at Ueno Tenmangu, one at Shiroyama Hachimangu, and one at Gosha Shrine).  Hopefully it'll be fun!

On a final note, you might notice that there's now a "Reading list" tab on the upper right-hand side of the blog.  I'm putting a list of all the books I read there, maybe with short descriptions if I feel like putting short descriptions up.  YAAAAY.

*I KNOW, RIGHT????

**High heels + snow = bad idea.

Recap: Life after the S-As' departure

Last time traveling post for now, so might as well enjoy it while it lasts!*

Some stuff that has happened since Nick left for home:

1. My new suitemate came.  Her name is Louki, she is Dutch, and she cleans things when she is bored.  Needless to say, we get along well.  Also, our suite is significantly cleaner and sometimes I don't have to wash a sink full of dishes every time I want to make dinner.

2. The semester ended.  Our Monday and Tuesday classes were definitely not parties.  I could see how an outside observer might think they were parties, but that outside observer would be wrong.  Definitely very serious classes.

3. Tuesday-sensei apparently knows someone who wants an English conversation partner, so he said he'll put us in touch.

4. I finished my graduate school applications.

5. I wrote an article for The Fulbrighter.
5a. I found out my article is going to be published.

6. I set up an interview with a priest at Ueno Tenmanguu for next Tuesday.  Hopefully it will go well.  I'm trying to type up and revise my interview questions so that I make sure to hit all the important points in a single sitting.

7. I was told that I must have been Japanese in a previous life.  (This is the standard response when people can't figure out why the heck I would be interested in Japan.  Never mind that it's interesting or anything.  I MUST have been Japanese in a previous life.)

8. I read Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan, which convinced me
A. I really don't want to join a millenarian movement
and
B. I really don't want to engage in any research where my research subjects are likely to try to murder me.

9. I tried Dutch licorice.  It is...really odd.

10. Itou-san invited me (and my roommates, so Louki is coming with me) to a Thing at Nagoya University tomorrow.  It involves mochi and foreign students aaaaaaaaaaaaand that's pretty much all I know.  But it should be fun!

11. I had penmanship class and somehow managed to screw up the kanji in my calligraphy name as well as the stroke order for pretty much every kanji ever.  MY SHAME IS UNBEARABLE.
It got to the point that Nakano-san would be chatting to the other ladies, and it would sound like, "Oh, did you hear that Suzuki-san is STROKE ORDER, DANA-CHAN moving to Hokkaido?"
11a. On the upside, Nakano-san gave me two children's books that are published by a publishing company that is associated with a shrine.  Needless to say, they're supposed to teach kids about Shinto.  The one I'm currently reading is about a hinoki (Japanese cypress) tree growing up in a forest.  Thus far in the story, the wind has taught the hinoki about the kami and how everyone has a meaning in life and the hinoki's best friend (a dung beetle) dropped dead from the cold.  It...is kind of morbid yet happy?

12. I bought a tea pot!  So now I can drink SO MUCH TEA.

13. I developed a minor addiction to kinkan, which my dictionary tells me means "kumquat" but is definitely not a kumquat.  Or at least what we think of in the states as a kumquat.  It's about twice as big and DELICIOUS.  I would eat a million of them every day if fruit wasn't so darned expensive.

14. I found out that the Fulbright mid-year conference is going to be on March 22, so I will be in Tokyo March 18-23 at the very least.  Might be there longer, depending on whether some other things pan out.  I'm definitely going to try to hit the Ghibli Museum and Washinomiya Shrine (the Lucky Star Shrine) while I am there, though.
14a. I found out that at the conference I have to give a presentation on my research...that is 3-5 minutes long.  I AM GOING TO GO INSANE.  How can I say anything worthwhile in that space?  lskjskhekrhaea
14b. I'm going on a tour of Nikko, sponsored by the Tokyo Fulbright Alumni Association, March 18-20.  It should be cool.

15. I apparently caught Steven's post office curse**, because when I went to the post office to get a customs declaration form so I could send (really late) Christmas presents home, they were convinced I actually wanted a box.
"I need the form you have to write the contents of the box on." 
"You mean a box?" 
"No, it is paper. If you put noodles in the box, you write 'noodles' on the form." 
"You mean a box?" 
"NO, it is a FORM for WRITING WHAT IS IN THE BOX. You post it on the box when you send things out of the country." 
 "You mean a box?"
PLEASE LISTEN TO THE WORDS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH.

So, yeah.  It hasn't been all that crazy exciting, but I've had some time to sit and read and do all the things I wasn't doing while I was traipsing all over Japan.  Tomorrow I've got the mystery mochi thing in the evening, and then Friday through Sunday is the fieldtrip to Izumo Taisha.  Updates will come...when updates come.

*I totally had this stuck in my head about a week ago, so now I will INFLICT IT UPON YOU MWAHAHAHA.

**Every time Steven goes to the post office, it inevitably ends in disaster and suffering.  Last time he went, their ATM malfunctioned.  Clearly the post office curse is contagious.

Calling me a "researcher" is just another way of saying I'm a giant nerd

Today was basically my day to completely nerd out.

First of all, I got to speak (over Skype) with Helen Hardacre this morning, which was pretty excellent.  She gave me a bunch of advice on graduate school applications (I contacted her because she's one of the people I'm looking at as a potential advisor), and also was Actually Interested in my research project, which was very exciting!  She'll apparently be coming to Nanzan in May, so hopefully I'll be able to meet her then!

Second of all, in class today we split into the "girl team" and the "boy team" to categorize different branches of pre-War Shinto philosophy, and so I got to use all those hours of reading about Yoshida Shinto and Ise Shinto and National Learning to correctly classify pretty much all of them.  (I said that Yoshida Shinto was a reverse honji suijaku type and National Learning was a shinbutsu bunri type when my advisor wanted us to say that both Yoshida Shinto and National Learning stressed the unique characteristics of Shinto and saw them as the source of all other religious traditions.)  The girl team (comprised of myself and the one other girl in the class) did much better than the boy team, in any case.

Third of all, I asked my advisor if there was a secondary library on campus, since the main college library's Shinto collection is one shelf of out-dated encyclopaedias.  He wound up taking me to the Nanzan Institute for Religious Studies' library, and I might have swooned a little bit.  SO MANY BOOKS.  And I haven't even read most of them!  (He also said that I can probably get into the closed area of the college library, where they keep all the interesting books.)
As we were heading out of the library, my advisor pulled a copy of Shinto: The Way Home off the shelf.  "Have you read this?"
I answered that I had read it.  It was one of the many (many, many, many, many) books I read for my thesis.
"The author's here; would you like to meet him?"
"YES?????"
So I got to meet Thomas Kasulis, who was nice enough to actually sit down and talk to me about my project and grad school and what he's working on right now (which is a history of Japanese philosophy, as a companion to Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook).  When he discovered that I was working on shrines and the local community, he proceeded to introduce me to three other professors, two of whom have connections to chounaikai* and said they would be happy to talk to me.  So that was very exciting as well!  Plus, everyone's reaction to my research project wasn't "Why would you study that?" or "Oh, I'm so sorry" (the two most common reactions I get from Nanzan students) but "Wow, that's a really cool topic, and I can't think of anyone else who's worked on it!"  So that was a nice affirmation for me that what I'm working on Actually Matters.  Plus, now I have contacts!  And I know where the books are!

...basically, deep down, I am a giant nerd, and I will stay happy as long as I have books and people to talk to about academics.  I'm pretty sure it's Not Normal to prefer talking about Taoism's influence on early kami-worship to talking about The Latest Pop Culture Thing, but I don't particularly care.  I am a nerd and proud of it!
...I have a feeling that graduate school will make me absurdly happy, in some ways.  Who needs a social life when you have a library?

Also, three final notes:
1. For some reason, mosquitoes keep biting my ankles.  Or, really, my right ankle.  I have a perfect little anklet of bite marks right now.
2. While several people left excited comments about possibly microwaving mochi during Stuff Not to Microwave Night, I have to tell you that it's not particularly exciting about exploding.  I couldn't even tell that it had exploded until I took it out of the microwave and discovered that it looked as though someone had dropped a sonic rain nuke on it.**
3. This song has taken over my brain.

*Neighborhood organizations would be the Western equivalent, I suppose.

**Eheheh.  Ask your local brony for an explanation.