Things/people I am thankful for:
- Nick (HI, I KNOW YOU'RE READING THIS BWAHAHAHA)
- my friends who have put up with super-stressed-and-adjusting-to-a-new-culture Dana, especially Geoff and Mary, without whom I would probably be in a puddle of death all over the floor
- my family for being my family
- my bro for...actually, I take that back. WHAT THE FORK, BRO.
- all you people who keep up correspondence with me, especially Sitar and Julia; your emails/letters make my day
- Nakano-san and Itou-san for being amazing and helpful and letting me ask strange questions
- the ujiko of Susanoo Shrine for being amazing and letting me sit in on their festivals and teaching me things even though I'm a weird gaijin
- persimmons for being delicious OM NOM NOM
- Alex for sharing an awesome Thanksgiving dinner with me* and talking about sex and religion** and destroying me at that taiko game
- the folks at the Nanzan Institute for Religious Studies, especially Professor Dorman who just got me an interview because he is THAT AWESOME
- the girls of Japanese III, especially O-san, JoJo-san, Ton-chan, and Kocchan for being awesome and friendly and thinking I have Disney princess hair
- my fellow Fulbrighters for being INSPIRING; seriously, guys, stop being so awesome
- Fulbright for giving me the opportunity to even be here, because, let's face it, getting paid to do what I love is pretty fantastic
- my bed for being warm and snuggly
G'night, and happy Thanksgiving!
*At Shooters, which is basically a gaijin bar. It was my first visit to a bar, whoo? Also, it was a surprisingly good dinner!
**Dang, we should have thrown some politics in there as well to round out our controversial topics.
If you don't already know, Alex is studying LGBT culture and I'm studying religion, so we were talking about research. Heh.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
やばい一宮の探検
So today I decided to visit Ichinomiya, which is about an hour away from me. Ichinomiya is a famous textiles and yarn town, and home of Noro yarn, which is basically why I was visiting. Well, that and they have a shrine which hosts one of the most--if not the most--famous Tanabata celebrations in Japan. Fieldwork!
Also, Ichinomiya has an obsession with the number 138. This is because the number can be read "ichi mi ya" and if you insert the possessive particle "no," it becomes "ichi no mi ya." PUNS.
Anyway, I went to Ichinomiya and walked to Masumida Shrine.
Here's the entrance to the shrine.
As you can probably tell, the weather was GREAT. And by "great" I mean VERY COLD.
GUESS WHAT THIS IS.
10 points to anyone who knows the answer.
This is now the blog about cool dragon water spigots.
Oh hey, kids are the treasures of the country and the household!
...that's why you should shichigosan.
The shrine has a huuuuuuuuuge entrance gate like you would normally see at a temple.
Speaking of shichigosan, that was going on today.
OH LOOK, ANOTHER ONE.
If you can't read the sign next to the sacred horse statue, it says, "Warning: Please do not climb on top of the rock."
What I learned from Chinese history class: if it had to be written down, there was probably a reason for it.
There were some stalls selling stuff to the shichigosan goers. Stuff like MASKS.
This is a really deep well which you peer into, and if you see your face reflected back at you, you and your family will be protected from illness.
And here's a mirror which will get rid of your impurities if you look into it.
And here's a supremely heavy rock which will grant you happiness in your family if you can lift it.
It was fun watching small children go through the three of them. The rock was definitely the favorite and involved the most shrieking.
SO CROWDED.
SO MANY SMALL CHILDREN.
And some more stalls.
This is a good luck bridge. I dunno why, BUT IT IS.
CHICKENS.
There was also a sign nearby saying to please stop abandoning cats on the shrine grounds. Yikes.
So then I went to the shopping district by the shrine, where I had heard that there were a lot of yarn and textile shops.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten that today is a national holiday (Labour Thanksgiving) and normal people get national holidays off.* Which meant that 50% of the shops were closed. UGH.
So I wandered around the very limited selection of shops. There were a LOT of places selling clothing, some of it very cheap, some of it very cheap and hand-sewn/knitted.
There was also a shop selling clothes, baby strollers, and curry. I dunno.
There was also this place:
...which was sort of like the Japanese equivalent of Michael's crossed with Joanne's Fabrics?
...and this place, which was a fabric store and sold POKEMON FABRIC and ONE PIECE FABRIC and GORGEOUS EMBROIDERED FABRIC.
I managed to find exactly one yarn store, which was full of little old ladies huddled around a space heater as they worked on their various knitting projects. It did not, however, sell Noro, and also all the yarn was in little plastic bags so you couldn't touch it before you bought it. I dunno about you, but I'm not going to buy any yarn unless I can rub my face on it first. Seriously, this is how you wind up working with horrifying polyester stuff. (Everything they sold was on the low end...either that or yarn in Japan is really cheap. 150 yen for a ball? Yeah.)
...I don't even know.
So then I wandered around until I managed to find a restaurant that wasn't closed/full of smokers.
MY LUNCH.
Katsudon and udon. Katsudon is lightly breaded, fried pork topped with egg-sauce stuff on rice. Udon is a fat noodle, in this case in a miso broth.
SO DELICIOUS.
So after that I wandered around some more, and failed at finding open yarn shops. Then it began to rain so I decided to head back to Nagoya, 'cause it was getting late anyway. And then I wrote an essay about FRIENDSHIP. It was...not that exciting, actually.
In completely different news, I don't understand やばい (yabai). According to my dictionary it means "dangerous, risky, awful, terrible, crap, terrific, amazing, cool." Wow. I'm glad that's clear. Things which I have heard people refer to as yabai include:
- earthquakes
- the weather when it's hot
- the weather when it's cold
- broken glass
- my mom's knitting skills (my classmates then started obsessively petting my sweater)
- Stuff Not to Microwave
- getting free chocolate from Monday sensei
- having homework
- not having homework
- my tolerance for cold
and many other things. Basically, it seems to be a word you can use to refer to everything.
On a final note, as I was walking to class on Monday, I wound up walking right behind some of my classmates, who, as it turned out, were arguing over whether I would finally be wearing long sleeves to class or not. They then turned around, realized that I was right behind them, and were immensely pleased that I was wearing long sleeves. "If you didn't wear long sleeves today, I would worry about you," one of them told me.
I would worry about me too, if I were wearing short sleeves in 50 degree weather with a freezing wind blowing. Not all of us can be part penguin.
WHY IS THAT HIGHLIGHTED.
*Nanzan doesn't believe in national holidays. We have school EVERY DAY ALL THE DAYS.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Teeny tiny culture shock
A lot of the time when people talk about cultural differences, they focus on the big things like RELIGION and POLITICS and TRADITIONS and GENDER NORMS. But many times it's the little differences that trip me up, like
Why would I buy diluted soy sauce when I could pay half as much for normal soy sauce and dilute it myself?
or
Why does it take more than two hours to dry my clothing in a dryer? Are Japanese dryers really that sad?
or
Why DON'T we have sinks on top of our toilets in the US? It's such a good idea!
or
Why does a place offering English lessons have a sign saying, "Let's learn with us!"?
Speaking of Engrish...
...what is a tableland?
Weirdly enough, every barber shop I have seen in Nagoya is actually a Bar Ber shop.
I have always wanted my Eye Lushes...um...done...stuff...with.
Also, going to the post office in Japan is so much fun.* First of all, the post office workers are all really friendly, and second of all, picking postage is AN ART. You don't just slap postage on your letter every which way, like the postal workers do in the US. No, you have to carefully assess each stamp--and there are a lot of different stamps!--and consider how they look together and whether they're appropriate for the season (the stamps change to reflect the flowers and foliage of the season). I went to mail a letter to my brother a couple of weeks ago, and had a very serious consultation with the woman at the post office about what would be the appropriate stamp to use. I wound up choosing a turtle stamp (yes, I am a huge fan of turtles), which she approved of.
On a final note, barring disaster, I'll be visiting Ichinomiya, home of Noro Yarns, on Wednesday. You might want to start mentally preparing yourself for a whole lot of knitting nerd speak now.
*Not so secret confession: I write a lot of letters. If you write me a letter, I will probably write you one back, but it will be really long and rambly and full of spastic doodles. Seriously, I love letters so much. It makes my day every time I get one.
Japanese postage is SO EXPENSIVE, though. 80 yen for inside the country and 110 for outside. My poor wallet... In other news, some lucky (?) people will be getting letters from me sometime in the next week...
Edit: Oh wait! I just remembered.
Julia said...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_mPa0IGtdo&feature=related
Can you please explain this one for me? Like how they got on a cloud?
It was created for the fifth anniversary of capybara, and tells the story of how Iwai-san (Mr. Congratulations) who is a kami who lives on a cloud (apparently) blessed the capybaras with good luck for five years.
Why would I buy diluted soy sauce when I could pay half as much for normal soy sauce and dilute it myself?
or
Why does it take more than two hours to dry my clothing in a dryer? Are Japanese dryers really that sad?
or
Why DON'T we have sinks on top of our toilets in the US? It's such a good idea!
or
Why does a place offering English lessons have a sign saying, "Let's learn with us!"?
Speaking of Engrish...
...what is a tableland?
Weirdly enough, every barber shop I have seen in Nagoya is actually a Bar Ber shop.
I have always wanted my Eye Lushes...um...done...stuff...with.
Also, going to the post office in Japan is so much fun.* First of all, the post office workers are all really friendly, and second of all, picking postage is AN ART. You don't just slap postage on your letter every which way, like the postal workers do in the US. No, you have to carefully assess each stamp--and there are a lot of different stamps!--and consider how they look together and whether they're appropriate for the season (the stamps change to reflect the flowers and foliage of the season). I went to mail a letter to my brother a couple of weeks ago, and had a very serious consultation with the woman at the post office about what would be the appropriate stamp to use. I wound up choosing a turtle stamp (yes, I am a huge fan of turtles), which she approved of.
On a final note, barring disaster, I'll be visiting Ichinomiya, home of Noro Yarns, on Wednesday. You might want to start mentally preparing yourself for a whole lot of knitting nerd speak now.
*Not so secret confession: I write a lot of letters. If you write me a letter, I will probably write you one back, but it will be really long and rambly and full of spastic doodles. Seriously, I love letters so much. It makes my day every time I get one.
Japanese postage is SO EXPENSIVE, though. 80 yen for inside the country and 110 for outside. My poor wallet... In other news, some lucky (?) people will be getting letters from me sometime in the next week...
Edit: Oh wait! I just remembered.
Can you please explain this one for me? Like how they got on a cloud?
It was created for the fifth anniversary of capybara, and tells the story of how Iwai-san (Mr. Congratulations) who is a kami who lives on a cloud (apparently) blessed the capybaras with good luck for five years.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
In which I am half of a Brown alumni reunion
Today was the Chubu* Fulbright Alumni Association's lecture/reception thing, so I went over to Aichi University to join one other current Fulbrighter and about 20 former Fulbrighters. There were two lectures, one in English and one in Japanese (although it seemed that everyone except for one guy was bilingual). The one in Japanese was about Japanese American oral histories (specifically those having to do with the WWII internment camps) and the one in English was about the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Both were good, although the English one definitely won on the nerd index by comparing American banks to Lois Lane.
Afterwards we got free dinner, which was delicious but I don't know what 75% of what I was eating was. OH WELL. It's probably a bad sign when you're pleased that your food has a face because at least then you know what it is.
I also met lots of interesting people, including a gentleman who studied at Brown University as an exchange student! We swapped tales of College Hill, and he wanted to know what had changed and what was still the same. "When I was there, they called the cafeteria...they called it the Ratty."
"Yep, it's still the Ratty."
"Is the food still," he searched for the right word, "Ratty?"
"It definitely is."
Also, he described Brown as "really wild." And he went there before SPG.**
Also, I'm supposed to present at their next meeting, which will be in May. Given how long the lectures went today, that means I have FORTY MINUTES in which I have a room full of people at my mercy mwahahaha. I mean, OH NO, I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT MY RESEARCH FOR FORTY MINUTES; WHAT TO DO? (Although, I realized that I haven't given a presentation that long since the Tea Ceremony Presentation Epic. You mean I don't have to condense a year's worth of research into 10 minutes? THANK GOODNESS.)
Also, I find it interesting how many Japanese people try to convince me that Japanese religion isn't "normal" because it isn't exclusive. How are you defining "normal" anyway? Chinese religion is the same way, so it's not as though Japan is the only country in the world in which you can worship more than one religious tradition. (There's actually a saying in Japanese, "Born Shinto, marry Christian, die Buddhist.") But a gentleman I was talking to today was insisting that non-exclusive religious practices weren't "normal." I tried to get him to explain what he meant by "normal" (and subtly hint that maybe he was applying Western norms to very non-Western ideas), but he was not convinced. "Normal" people are religiously exclusive, like Americans. (Of course, when I explained that I have celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas and the winter solstice, sometimes all in a single year, he got very flustered and tried to get me to admit that I was secretly Baptist...? I don't know. It was kind of odd.)
Oh well. I will have FORTY MINUTES in May in which to convince him. BWAHAHAHA.
In completely unrelated news, this song is SO CUTE. It's about capybara in an ONSEN (hot spring, for the uninitiated). C'MON, you'd have to be HEARTLESS to not find this EXCESSIVELY ADORABLE. It also makes me really want to visit an onsen. Hmmmmm, onsens.
It's almost midnight here so I should sleep. G'night!
*Chubu (中部) is the region of Japan in which Aichi Prefecture is located.
**Sex Power God. It's a party. Don't look it up with small children around.
Afterwards we got free dinner, which was delicious but I don't know what 75% of what I was eating was. OH WELL. It's probably a bad sign when you're pleased that your food has a face because at least then you know what it is.
I also met lots of interesting people, including a gentleman who studied at Brown University as an exchange student! We swapped tales of College Hill, and he wanted to know what had changed and what was still the same. "When I was there, they called the cafeteria...they called it the Ratty."
"Yep, it's still the Ratty."
"Is the food still," he searched for the right word, "Ratty?"
"It definitely is."
Also, he described Brown as "really wild." And he went there before SPG.**
Also, I'm supposed to present at their next meeting, which will be in May. Given how long the lectures went today, that means I have FORTY MINUTES in which I have a room full of people at my mercy mwahahaha. I mean, OH NO, I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT MY RESEARCH FOR FORTY MINUTES; WHAT TO DO? (Although, I realized that I haven't given a presentation that long since the Tea Ceremony Presentation Epic. You mean I don't have to condense a year's worth of research into 10 minutes? THANK GOODNESS.)
Also, I find it interesting how many Japanese people try to convince me that Japanese religion isn't "normal" because it isn't exclusive. How are you defining "normal" anyway? Chinese religion is the same way, so it's not as though Japan is the only country in the world in which you can worship more than one religious tradition. (There's actually a saying in Japanese, "Born Shinto, marry Christian, die Buddhist.") But a gentleman I was talking to today was insisting that non-exclusive religious practices weren't "normal." I tried to get him to explain what he meant by "normal" (and subtly hint that maybe he was applying Western norms to very non-Western ideas), but he was not convinced. "Normal" people are religiously exclusive, like Americans. (Of course, when I explained that I have celebrated Hanukkah and Christmas and the winter solstice, sometimes all in a single year, he got very flustered and tried to get me to admit that I was secretly Baptist...? I don't know. It was kind of odd.)
Oh well. I will have FORTY MINUTES in May in which to convince him. BWAHAHAHA.
In completely unrelated news, this song is SO CUTE. It's about capybara in an ONSEN (hot spring, for the uninitiated). C'MON, you'd have to be HEARTLESS to not find this EXCESSIVELY ADORABLE. It also makes me really want to visit an onsen. Hmmmmm, onsens.
It's almost midnight here so I should sleep. G'night!
*Chubu (中部) is the region of Japan in which Aichi Prefecture is located.
**Sex Power God. It's a party. Don't look it up with small children around.
Friday, November 18, 2011
I can't eat natto
Today is the saddest day of my life, for today I have discovered a food that I physically cannot eat.
And that food is natto.
One of the girls from the Nanzan Institute who I went on the mystery tour with dared me to eat natto.* She even gave me freeze-dried natto...things. So today I screwed up my courage and decided to try it. I found it so revolting that I started gagging just by having it touch my tongue. When I tried to swallow it, I thought I was going to throw up. I wound up spitting it out and drinking way too much water and sucking on a piece of hard candy until I stopped feeling like I was going to die.
I can't even explain WHY it tasted bad. It wasn't anything in particular, just a general taste of WRONG. Sort of like if you ate a peach but instead of it tasting like a peach it tasted like super spicy chili flavored with molasses? I DON'T KNOW. It was bad. It did not, however, taste like rotting meat or corpses (both of which I have heard people describe it as tasting like), but then again, I haven't eaten either rotting meat or corpses, so I wouldn't really know!
...is it bad that I'm tempted to try to eat it again just to see if I was just imagining the stomach-churning horror the first time around?
Other stuff I've been doing!
On Tuesday my advisor's seminar class visited Atsuta Shrine:
It's basically the biggest, most important shrine in the area. It enshrines one of the three imperial regalia** (the sword) and is just generally the boss shrine.
It was the fifteenth, which is traditionally the date on which shichigosan is celebrated, so the precincts where swarmed with small children. There were also a lot of different stands, like this one, which was selling chitose ame (千歳飴; literally "thousand years of age candy"), a kind of sugar candy that's normally associated with shichigosan.
The shrine, being really old, also has some amazing trees.
There were flower and ikebana (flower arrangement) exhibitions going on on the shrine grounds as well.
So this wall is Super Important because apparently it was built by Oda Nobunaga?
This miko was performing purification ceremonies.
...and here's the shrine.
...and here's the long line of kids (probably from the same preschool) who were coming to pay their respects to the kami as we were leaving.
Another amazing tree!
And a tiny shrine, enshrining a kami of pure water.
Specifically this pure water.
You have to scoop the water from the stream and throw it upstream to splash on top of a rock three times.
My advisor is demonstrating here.
One of my classmates threatened to throw the water at us instead.
(You can see the rock in this picture.)
And here's another one of my classmates throwing water.
So I believe this is the building where the sword is enshrined?
Here's where they were conducting the shichigosan ceremonies. As you can probably tell, it was pretty crowded.
Here's the Super Famous Wall again.
Trees! Blossoming in fall! This was actually on the news a couple of weeks ago; a bunch of sakura (cherry blossom) trees starting flowering randomly. Scientists think that it might be caused by the typhoon plus the really weird weather--the typhoon tore all the leaves off the trees, and then the weather warmed up, so the trees thought it was spring and started flowering. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's pretty surreal to see trees flowering in mid-November.
So then we went into the museum associated with the shrine, where they have a whole lot of swords. SO MANY SWORDS.
These guys were outside. They're making metal plates with kids celebrating shichigosan's names on them.
One of my classmates wanted to know if we could pretend we had children so we could get nameplates.
So that was that field trip. Not terribly long, but still fun.
Yesterday (Thursday) I went to Susanoo Shrine for their monthly festival, and actually got to participate, instead of just watching this time, which was pretty exciting. I managed to screw up only once (I bowed from the wrong place shtoeuwtwhskhgskah I am disgraced forever). And then afterwards I got to help divide up the offerings and purify the shrine grounds by throwing rice and salt that had been used in the ceremony while saying, 「祓えたまえ、清めたまえ」(roughly translated to "bestow purification, bestow [different word for purification]").
Also, due to a series of complicated circumstances, there is a possibility that I will get to participate in the New Year's ceremony at the shrine. I think this has less to do with my dazzling abilities and more to do with the fact that they have pretty much nobody else to help out. A lot of the conversation went, "Well, what about T-san?" "Isn't he 80?" "Actually, I thought he was 90 by now..." Still, the fact that they even consider me eligible is pretty exciting! Also, next month I get to come early and help them set up the offerings.
After that I went and talked to Itou-san at Kawahara Shrine for ~3 hours about a whole bunch of different things. SO MANY NOTES. But then randomly,
Itou-san: So when is your boyfriend going to propose to you?
Me: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Itou-san: Well, I guess you still have to get your doctorate.
Me: ...yes...? Yes, I do.
Itou-san: So he's got a while.
Me: Um.
So, um, that was exciting? It also came out of NOWHERE.
Anyway, I then had to leave to go to class, but Itou-san gave me some chitose ame before I left:
I am an honorary little kid!
AND THEN today I went and talked to Professor Dorman, who works at the Nanzan Institute for Religious Studies. He was really helpful and has promised to put me in contact with some people and also suggested some reading material. So that was awesome.
And now I am tired and should probably go work on my graduate school application essays. I have no idea why I thought applying to grad school while on a Fulbright would be a good idea.
*Natto is fermented soy beans. It smells somewhat akin to if you rolled a dead body in a wet dog. It looks somewhat like feces. It looks even worse if you mix it with mayonnaise. When you see advertisements for it in the grocery store, they always stress how healthy it is for you, not how tasty it is. It's very much an acquired taste.
**As the story goes, Amaterasu gave her grandson the three imperial regalia--a sword, a jewel, and a mirror--to prove that he was the emperor of Japan. The mirror is enshrined in Ise, the sword is enshrined in Atsuta, and the imperial family has the jewel.
And that food is natto.
One of the girls from the Nanzan Institute who I went on the mystery tour with dared me to eat natto.* She even gave me freeze-dried natto...things. So today I screwed up my courage and decided to try it. I found it so revolting that I started gagging just by having it touch my tongue. When I tried to swallow it, I thought I was going to throw up. I wound up spitting it out and drinking way too much water and sucking on a piece of hard candy until I stopped feeling like I was going to die.
I can't even explain WHY it tasted bad. It wasn't anything in particular, just a general taste of WRONG. Sort of like if you ate a peach but instead of it tasting like a peach it tasted like super spicy chili flavored with molasses? I DON'T KNOW. It was bad. It did not, however, taste like rotting meat or corpses (both of which I have heard people describe it as tasting like), but then again, I haven't eaten either rotting meat or corpses, so I wouldn't really know!
...is it bad that I'm tempted to try to eat it again just to see if I was just imagining the stomach-churning horror the first time around?
Other stuff I've been doing!
On Tuesday my advisor's seminar class visited Atsuta Shrine:
It's basically the biggest, most important shrine in the area. It enshrines one of the three imperial regalia** (the sword) and is just generally the boss shrine.
It was the fifteenth, which is traditionally the date on which shichigosan is celebrated, so the precincts where swarmed with small children. There were also a lot of different stands, like this one, which was selling chitose ame (千歳飴; literally "thousand years of age candy"), a kind of sugar candy that's normally associated with shichigosan.
The shrine, being really old, also has some amazing trees.
There were flower and ikebana (flower arrangement) exhibitions going on on the shrine grounds as well.
So this wall is Super Important because apparently it was built by Oda Nobunaga?
This miko was performing purification ceremonies.
...and here's the shrine.
...and here's the long line of kids (probably from the same preschool) who were coming to pay their respects to the kami as we were leaving.
Another amazing tree!
And a tiny shrine, enshrining a kami of pure water.
Specifically this pure water.
You have to scoop the water from the stream and throw it upstream to splash on top of a rock three times.
My advisor is demonstrating here.
One of my classmates threatened to throw the water at us instead.
(You can see the rock in this picture.)
And here's another one of my classmates throwing water.
So I believe this is the building where the sword is enshrined?
Here's where they were conducting the shichigosan ceremonies. As you can probably tell, it was pretty crowded.
Here's the Super Famous Wall again.
Trees! Blossoming in fall! This was actually on the news a couple of weeks ago; a bunch of sakura (cherry blossom) trees starting flowering randomly. Scientists think that it might be caused by the typhoon plus the really weird weather--the typhoon tore all the leaves off the trees, and then the weather warmed up, so the trees thought it was spring and started flowering. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's pretty surreal to see trees flowering in mid-November.
So then we went into the museum associated with the shrine, where they have a whole lot of swords. SO MANY SWORDS.
These guys were outside. They're making metal plates with kids celebrating shichigosan's names on them.
One of my classmates wanted to know if we could pretend we had children so we could get nameplates.
So that was that field trip. Not terribly long, but still fun.
Yesterday (Thursday) I went to Susanoo Shrine for their monthly festival, and actually got to participate, instead of just watching this time, which was pretty exciting. I managed to screw up only once (I bowed from the wrong place shtoeuwtwhskhgskah I am disgraced forever). And then afterwards I got to help divide up the offerings and purify the shrine grounds by throwing rice and salt that had been used in the ceremony while saying, 「祓えたまえ、清めたまえ」(roughly translated to "bestow purification, bestow [different word for purification]").
Also, due to a series of complicated circumstances, there is a possibility that I will get to participate in the New Year's ceremony at the shrine. I think this has less to do with my dazzling abilities and more to do with the fact that they have pretty much nobody else to help out. A lot of the conversation went, "Well, what about T-san?" "Isn't he 80?" "Actually, I thought he was 90 by now..." Still, the fact that they even consider me eligible is pretty exciting! Also, next month I get to come early and help them set up the offerings.
After that I went and talked to Itou-san at Kawahara Shrine for ~3 hours about a whole bunch of different things. SO MANY NOTES. But then randomly,
Itou-san: So when is your boyfriend going to propose to you?
Me: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Itou-san: Well, I guess you still have to get your doctorate.
Me: ...yes...? Yes, I do.
Itou-san: So he's got a while.
Me: Um.
So, um, that was exciting? It also came out of NOWHERE.
Anyway, I then had to leave to go to class, but Itou-san gave me some chitose ame before I left:
I am an honorary little kid!
AND THEN today I went and talked to Professor Dorman, who works at the Nanzan Institute for Religious Studies. He was really helpful and has promised to put me in contact with some people and also suggested some reading material. So that was awesome.
And now I am tired and should probably go work on my graduate school application essays. I have no idea why I thought applying to grad school while on a Fulbright would be a good idea.
*Natto is fermented soy beans. It smells somewhat akin to if you rolled a dead body in a wet dog. It looks somewhat like feces. It looks even worse if you mix it with mayonnaise. When you see advertisements for it in the grocery store, they always stress how healthy it is for you, not how tasty it is. It's very much an acquired taste.
**As the story goes, Amaterasu gave her grandson the three imperial regalia--a sword, a jewel, and a mirror--to prove that he was the emperor of Japan. The mirror is enshrined in Ise, the sword is enshrined in Atsuta, and the imperial family has the jewel.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Genze Riyaku
Academic Post #6
Genze Riyaku: Buy Two Benefits, Get One Free
So today I'm going to do something a little bit different and talk about an important concept in Shinto studies (and, in fact, Japanese religious studies as a whole): genze riyaku.
Genze riyaku (現世利益) literally means "this-worldly benefits." The term can be used to refer to good luck as a whole, but is most commonly used to refer to material benefits such as success in studies, protection from traffic accidents, and safe childbirth, as well as less tangible benefits such as familial harmony and marital happiness. Generally you can split genze riyaku into two categories: kaiun (開運) and yakuyoke (厄除け). Kaiun (literally “opening luck”) refers to any benefit which beckons in good fortune, such as the aforementioned success in studies and familiar harmony benefits. Yakuyoke (normally translated as either “warding off evil” or “prevention of danger”) refers to benefits which prevent bad or evil forces from influencing one’s life—for example, protection from traffic accidents.
Why is all this important? Well, pretty much every shrine you will visit will offer some sort of genze riyaku. Benefits can be gained in a variety of different ways:
- Praying to the kami
- Asking the priest to pray to the kami and/or perform special services for you
- Buying an omamori
- Writing on an ema
- Buying an omikuji (a fortune) and tying it up
Okay, you say, but why is this important? The short answer is that it’s important because People Have Strong Opinions about it. Many religious scholars—and the National Learning scholars, for that matter—are of the opinion that genze riyaku “cheapens” Shinto. People visit shrines, they argue, solely for the purpose of receiving benefits. They only pray to the kami when they need something, and so they don’t really believe in Shinto. They’re just going through the motions to get what they want and then they don’t come back. Genze riyaku, they argue, is turning Shinto into a commercial enterprise, not a religion.*
Even when people aren’t arguing that genze riyaku cheapens Shinto, they are arguing that all practices that people perform at shrines—buying omamori, praying, writing on ema—are intended to induce genze riyaku. One of the main scholars in this camp is Ian Reader, who, in response to scholars and even Japanese people who deny that their behavior is religious and, in fact, it falls more solidly under custom, responds that all practices that take place at religious centers are inherently religious, whether the practitioner sees them as religious or not.
There are, of course, a whole lot of problems with both of these arguments. Let’s look at some of them:
1. These scholars are making a value judgment. “Genze riyaku is worse than no genze riyaku!” they cry. “Commercialized Shinto is worse than commercialized Shinto!” Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Maybe they’re just different. But if from the outset you’ve decided that one is worse than the other, you’re not going to be giving a very objective view.
2. Not everybody wants genze riyaku. Sure, there are people who visit shrines to receive genze riyaku. But there are people who may be visiting shrines and engaging in what Reader calls “benefit-seeking behaviors” without expecting to receive anything in return. These people have a relationship with the local kami, and they are dropping in to say hello, in a sense. For example, Kasulis gives the example of businessmen stopping at a shrine on their morning rush to the train station. Despite their obvious haste to reach the trains, they “not only slow down but walk up to the shrine building, stop at the trough to wash their hands and mouth, then go up to the shrine, clap their hands, bow formally with hands held together in prayerlike form, clap again, and then leave the shrine grounds. As soon as they leave the precincts, they again break into a run.”[1] When these men were questioned about their motives for their visits to the shrine, the discussion often followed this form:
“Why did you stop at the shrine?”
“I almost always stop on the way to work.”
“Yes, but why? Was it to give thanks, to ask a favor, to repent, to pay homage, to avoid something bad from happening? What was your purpose?”
“I don’t really know. It was nothing in particular.”
“Well, then, when you stood in front of the shrine with your palms together, what did you say, either aloud or silently to yourself?”
“I didn’t say anything.”[2]
Are they performing “benefit-seeking behaviors”? Yes, they’re praying. Are they actually seeking benefits? No. You can “visit” the kami of the shrine and pay your respects before work in the hope that someday, if disaster strikes and you need something from the kami, the fact that you already have a relationship will prompt a more efficacious response. Or you can just drop in to say “hello” or “thank you” or “it’s a really nice day” without expecting anything in return.
3. The kami will not magically fix everything for you. If you buy an omamori for success in examinations, you still have to study for the examination or else you will fail. Nobody believes buying an omamori gives you a free pass. In fact, shrines often emphasize the effort needed to achieve your goals; Iwashimizu Hachiman Shrine’s ema for education success include a picture of Thomas Edison and his famous saying, “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” If you don’t study your brains out to pass that test, you might as well not buy the ema at all.
4. Some people don’t wish for anything at all. Somewhat related to the last point, but a surprising number of people use the act of writing on an ema or buying an omamori to reinforce their commitment to studying (or creating harmony in their household or being a safe driver). For example, while many ema wishes are written in the form “may____” (“may I enter XYZ high school,” “may I find a good boyfriend,” “may I be protected from traffic accidents), others are written in the form “I will____” (“I WILL enter XYZ high school,” “I WILL find a good boyfriend,” “I WILL be a safe driver”). Are these requests? No, they’re public statements of intention. By displaying such a message, these people are expressing their desire to enter a high school or find a boyfriend or be a safe driver in front of the kami as well as everyone who comes to the shrine to read the ema. Similarly, by buying an omamori for success in examinations, a student may be expressing his or her commitment to do well in the examination.
5. The majority of omamori are bought for other people. Let’s say your mom gives you a success in studies omamori. What’s she saying to you? “I am giving you a divine object to help you pass your exams”? “You better do well in those exams or else; here’s a handy reminder of how important these exams are”? “I know you’re working hard to pass your exams; here’s a present to remind you I’m behind you one hundred percent”? Maybe it’s all of the above. Or maybe you go out with your soccer team and write on ema at Shirahime Shrine (oh man, you remember those pictures I took?). You could say that you’re looking for help from the kami, but you could also say that you’re reaffirming your commitment to achieving your common goal while stressing the importance of teamwork. Therefore, you can’t say buying an omamori or writing on an ema is a solely religious (or materialistic) practice—there’s also a lot of social communication going on, reinforcing the bonds that tie people together and reminding people of their obligations to their family/team/friends.
And thus concludes my (very) brief introduction to genze riyaku.
Further Reading
Books:
Enduring Identities: The Guise of Shinto in Contemporary Japan by John K. Nelson
Although not specifically about genze riyaku, he does talk about alternate interpretations of "religious" practices in modern Shinto.
Religion in Contemporary Japan by Ian Reader
A general overview of religion in Japan...in 1991. Needless to say, it's slightly out of date.
Practically Religious by Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe
As can be surmised from the title, this is THE genze riyaku book. Lots of interesting information on contemporary practices, even if you disagree with the interpretation.
Kurozumikyo and the New Religions of Japan by Helen Hardacre
Has a section specifically about genze riyaku in the New Religions and why the purely materialistic interpretations fail. With some tweaking, the argument can be expanded to the established religions as well.
Articles (all of these can be accessed through JSTOR):
Reader, Ian. “Letters to the Gods: The Form and Meaning of Ema.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18.1 (1991): 24-50.
Exactly what it sounds like. Reader wrote an article about ema and genze riyaku.
Anderson, Richard W. “What Constitutes Religious Activity? (I).” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18.4 (1991): 369-372.
Then Anderson wrote a response to Reader's article saying Reader was wrong.
Reader, Ian. “What Constitutes Religious Activity? (II)” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 18.4 (1991): 373-376.
Then Reader wrote a response to Anderson's response saying Anderson was wrong.
Swanger, Eugene R. and K. Peter Takayama. “A Preliminary Examination of the ‘Omamori’ Phenomenon.” Asian Folklore Studies 40.2 (1981): 237-252.
Specifically about omamori. Talks about omamori use to strengthen social ties.
Zeng, Kanming. “Prayer, Luck, and Spiritual Strength: The Desecularization of Entrance Examination Systems in East Asia .” Comparative Education Review 40.3 (1996): 264-279.
Specifically about practices to ensure success in examination.
*It’s worth noting that the same argument is made about the New Religions. I.e. the New Religions are focused solely on attaining material benefits and thus aren’t religions at all but more like elaborate cons. It’s also worth noting that a lot of these arguments come from priests in the established religions (i.e. Shinto and Buddhism). Definitely no bias there.
Monday, November 14, 2011
Kyoto adventures
Warning: This will be a super long post. I am breaking it into super handy sections, but it will still be super long. It will be MIND-BLOWINGLY LONG. Prepare to have your mind blown.
So on Friday I rode the subway to Nagoya Station and took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto Station. It was only about a 35-ish minute ride, which is really not bad. Anyway, from Kyoto Station, aka the Station of Death and Despair*, I took the subway up north and walked over to Kyoto University. I still had approximately a million years before I was meeting up with Steven and Michele, though, so I decided to walk over to Yoshida Shrine, which is right next to Kyoto U.
You know, torii are really awkward to take pictures of if they're on a street and you don't want to get hit by cars.
Yoshida Shrine, by the way, is associated with Yoshida Shinto, i.e. "Japan is the trunk and China is the branches and India is the flowers."
Yoshida Shrine apparently has a preschool associated with it. And by "associated with it" I mean "the preschool is located on the shrine grounds." The advertisement for the shrine says, "In the midst of abundant nature, grow up carefree and learn funly." (Yes, I know funly isn't a word in English, but the word in Japanese is the adverb form of fun.)
Shrines in Kyoto are HUGE, which is why they can have ridiculously long approaches to the actual shrine. Also, in this case there's Yoshida Shrine (and all the associated mini-shrines) and then about a bazillion shrines that are right next to it, as you will see.
Mini-shrines!
You'll see lists of names like this at most shrines. They list people or corporations who have donated to the shrine. At some shrines, they'll put up a new wall of these every time they have a festival.
...and thus began my very long adventure with STAIRS.
This is the main shrine, which is to say THE Yoshida Shrine.
And here's a shot of the parking lot from inside the shrine. The parking lot is shared with the preschool (which you can see the edge of on the right).
More tiny shrines!
These stairs were kind of terrifying, to be honest. Although the fact that I was carrying a huge bag didn't help.
STAIRSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
...and another tiny shrine!
So then I climbed a whole bunch more stairs (some of which were more stair-like than others) and found this playground. Which was apparently on top of a mountain, because in all my stair climbing I had somehow climbed a mountain. Whoo?
So I sat up there for a while to catch my breath, watched the same guy in a grey tracksuit run past me four or five times, and then decided to wander around a bit more.
This torii is positioned over a road. Cars drive through it.
Here's one of the associated shrines I was talking about.
And here's the front of the shrine building.
It's hard to see from this picture, but there was a random cat chilling on the roof of the honden.
WELP, I GUESS MY RESEARCH IS DONE NOW.
This is the approach to an associated Inari shrine.
And here's the Inari shrine.
VERY TINY SHRINE. (This is also an Inari.)
And another tiny shrine.
And a whole hillside of tiny shrines.
Although a lot of these are stone tablets, and not physical buildings.
AND EVEN MORE SHRINES.
So while wandering around, I came across this. On the backs of torii, the date of the torii's construction and the person/family/organization who donated money to build the torii are often recorded.
This one was donated by a cooking club.
The torii in question belongs to this super tiny shrine.
...hey, this one was donated by a cooking club too! HMMMMM.
Oh, well, it's a shrine to the kami of cooking, eating, and drinking. THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING.
(If this shrine had sold an omamori, I would have so bought it.)
So after that it was starting to get dark, so I headed back to Kyoto U., where I met up with Steven. We hung out at his apartment for a while and talked about Research and Life and Fulbright and Kyoto. And then we went to meet Michele for dinner at Bikkuri Donkey. If you've never been to Bikkuri Donkey, I think everything on their menu has hamburger in it. And I don't mean American hamburgers--imagine a fat, oblong hamburger patty with nothing on it. Also, Bikkuri Donkey's interior design scheme would be best described as "Chili's meets Fry's Electronics." Um, yeah. I have no pictures, but you can imagine it in your MINDS. Or Google it.
ANYWAY, for some reason the waiter gave us three pairs of chopsticks and only one fork and spoon, so we had fun trying to figure out who they thought needed a fork. We also probably weirded out the Japanese family next to us, but WHATEVER. Anyway, it was really nice to hang out with the two of them.
In other news, Bikkuri Donkey will actually give you four fries if you order one of the plates with fries. FOUR. No more, no less.
Friday night I crashed on Michele's floor (thank you, Michele!) and then woke up to two earthquakes at about 6:30 a.m. It was exciting. I think I only notice earthquakes when I'm asleep.
*If you have never been to Kyoto Station, you cannot possibly imagine the fear it strikes into the hearts of travelers. It is HUGE and SPRAWLING and doesn't really make much sense at all. Like, why are there a million ways to get onto the JR platform but only one to get onto the Kintetsu? What's the deal with the second floor? Just to illustrate how completely confusing this station is, I once got lost trying to walk through it (i.e. enter on the north side and exit on the south side). Yeahhhhh.
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Michele and Steven were going on a hike the next morning, so I wound up leaving Michele's place really early and sitting by the side of the Kamo River to watch the sunrise. It was GORGEOUS, and I highly recommend it, if you're ever up way too early in Kyoto. However, I had one of the most surreal conversations ever.
Random guy: Good morning.
Me: Good morning.
Random guy: Are you American?
Me: Yes.
Random guy: I am an unemployed homeless.
Me: Oh, I see...?
Random guy: [pointing at a crane] Do you know what that bird is called?
Me: Um...duck.* WAIT, NO, CRANE.
Random guy: It's not a duck.
Me: It's a crane.
Random guy: Ducks go like [makes quacking noises].
Me: I know, it's a crane.
Random guy: Bye.
Me: Bye....?
IT WAS REALLY WEIRD.
Anyway, I had 4 hours before I was supposed to meet with Mary, so I decided to walk over to the Kyoto International Manga Museum to see when they opened. As it turned out, they opened at 10 and Mary's train was supposed to get in at 11:14, so I decided to wander toward Kyoto Station and see if I ran into anything interesting. (I also stopped at a Starbucks and got breakfast, because Japanese Starbucks apparently sells food that doesn't taste like sawdust. It's amazing. Unfortunately, the Starbucks was playing All Christmas Music All the Time. And also had signs saying, "Let's Merry!" Yeah.)
Anyway, after a bunch of walking, I ran into Higashi Honganji, which is a temple not far from Kyoto Station. There was no entrance fee, so I decided to go inside and check it out.
Here's the main building.
This picture is almost entirely for Miranda and Shannon and Mary. Because DRAGONS.
A huuuuuuuuuuuge bell at the temple. It, like most bells at temples, is rung 108 times at New Year's to signify the 108 sins of humanity.
Here's the main building from a different angle.
The actual temple was pretty underwhelming. A large section of it is being...drat it, what's the English word? Where you're fixing something and making it like new? It's not refurbishing. I HOPE YOU ALL KNOW WHAT I MEAN, 'CAUSE I'M BLANKING HERE. Anyway, they're doing that so all the treasures inside the building were behind closed doors, which meant that there were a lot of rooms that were just tatami rooms with closed sliding doors. Eh.
RESTORED. That's the word.
However, they did have a giant rope made out of human hair! It was...pretty creepy, actually.
Also, there was this amusing sign on the child's seat in the toilet. It says:
"WARNING
Please follow these rules to be safe.
Don't take your eyes off your child.
Be careful not to pinch your finger.
Don't smoke."
...okay, maybe I'm a little bit too amused by this, but who puts no smoking signs on children's chairs...?
Anyway, aside from the extremely underwhelming temple, there was a really cool exhibit about the life of a woman who was a quadruple amputee but taught herself to sew, knit, and do calligraphy and was a huge advocate of disability support groups in Japan. The exhibit is still running for a little while, so if you find yourself with some free time in Kyoto and you really want to learn about why you should treat gangrene as fast as possible, you should check it out.
This was a sign outside of the temple. Is it just me or does it sound vaguely ominous...? (And, no, it's not Engrish. It says the same thing in Japanese.)
Anyway, I then walked over to Kyoto Station, but it turned out that there had been some sort of trouble with signal lights so all the Shinkansen were EXTREMELY delayed. So Mary's train got in at 11:50 instead of 11:14. Which wouldn't have been a problem except that I had told my host mom that we would be over at noon, and my host family's house is A MILLION MILES AWAY.
*To give myself credit, it's the Kamo River, and "kamo" means "duck."
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Here's the shrine office.
These are a series of ema from a group of girls who are all on the same high school soccer team.
So after that we checked into our hotel room (at Tour Club Kyoto, which I can highly recommend, especially if you don't speak Japanese) and got dinner. After dinner I met with Takabayashi-san, the leader of my host brothers' Boy Scout troop, and he was kind enough to talk to me for two hours. I will save that story for another time, though, 'cause this blog post is already going to be insanely long.
*That was referring to my apologizing, not my being late, for the record. My host mom is amazing, but also teases me CONSTANTLY. Her most common reasons for teasing me included:
1. My apologizing all the time.
2. Her being taller than me even though I'm American.
3. My being really bad at being stereotypically American.
4. My knowing obscure Japanese terms.
5. My being interested in really obscure Japanese things.
**Host mom: Kisa's gotten taller... Moto's gotten taller... You haven't gotten taller...
Me: I'M TRYING.
***My host family owns a restaurant, which is the downstairs of their house. I got to eat there last time I visited, and I really highly recommend it.
If you want to visit, they have a website!
It's a bit on the pricey side (5,500 yen or 7,000 yen for a course meal at dinner and cheaper for lunch), but well worth your money.
Be aware that my host dad will probably try to talk to you if you sit at the counter, and he's basically incomprehensible if you don't speak Kyoto dialect.
****AND HE HAS HAIR NOW. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT. I guess he was shaving his head before. EVERYTHING I BELIEVED WAS WRONG.
*****The idea is that your girlfriend will start cooking for you and you'll gain weight. So "Have you gained weight?" can be a compliment, hinting that maybe you have a special someone in your life.
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First Japanese parfait I have ever had and DANG IT WAS GOOD. Bizarre, but GOOOOOOOOOOD.
P.S. We are adults which means we can eat parfaits for breakfast. OH YEAH.
And then we hopped on a train and went to Fushimi Inari!
...where there were foxes EVERYWHERE.
...and torii EVERYWHERE.
...and small children in kimono EVERYWHERE because it's shichigosan.
There are ema shaped like torii.
A bunch of kids lined up for shichigosan ceremonies...
Here's the start of the veeeeeeeeeeeery long torii-lined walk all the way around the mountain.
Fox-shaped ema!
People drew faces on them.
And more torii!
Here's the view from near the top of the mountain.
People put their business cards up here to gain success in business. Of course, it turned out that I had given my last business card to Takabayashi-san the previous day. AUGH.
...and more torii!
There were a bunch of huge spiders along the trail.
Japan is not a good place for you if you have a spider phobia.
This fox statue is kind of creepy, to be honest.
Along the trail there are a lot of turn offs which are full of tiny shrines that "belong" to individuals. That doesn't stop anyone else from praying there.
The torii path went around the mountain and through the woods...
Here's a fox statue dressed in the clothes you would normally see on a jizo.
At one of the turn offs there was this random waterfall...
...into a bucket. I think it's for cold water austerities?
STAIRS.
OH MY GODS, GAIJIN. WHAT THE FORK IS YOUR PROBLEM. I am glad you woz 'ere, Keele or whatever your name is, but you do realize that this is a sacred place, right? And when you do this all the other gaijin look bad too? UGGGGGGGGH.
And another huge spider. I would rather be friends with this spider than someone who graffitis torii.
...and descending the mountain...
Here's an interesting mix of a bunch of religious objects from very different religious traditions...
The sign says, "BE WARY OF MOLESTERS."
AUUUUGH.
So then we hopped on a train and went to Nijo Castle, but first we walked to Sanjo, where we passed...
...the giant animatronic crab restaurant. There's one in Nagoya too!
There was a flower exhibition going on at Nijo Castle.
And here's the castle.
And here's more of the castle.
The castle's famous for its "nightingale floors"; the floors...sing...or make this really odd noise when you walk on them. They were made that way so that no one could sneak up on Tokugawa Ieyasu and assassinate him. And, man, there were a lot of people who wanted to assassinate him.
Here's the back of the castle.
And the garden...
...and a moat...
The leaves weren't really changing color yet, as you can probably tell from the pictures.
Heheheheh. I have done my duty.
Anyway, after that I managed to get us really lost for a while before we managed to find a train station and went back to Kyoto station to take the Shinkansen back to our respective cities.
Needless to say, today I was pretty exhausted (and my feet and knees needed a rest).
Moral of the story: I love Kyoto. I'd forgotten how much I love the atmosphere there. It was really awesome to hang out with people. It would have been a lot harder to go back to Nagoya if I weren't so excited for research this week. I will be doing something research related every day this week except Wednesday, I believe, and Wednesday I'll probably be reading, which is research related. I am a huge research nerd.
Anyway, I will end this INSANELY long post now. G'night!
Kyoto Adventures (part 1): Friday Adventures
So on Friday I rode the subway to Nagoya Station and took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto Station. It was only about a 35-ish minute ride, which is really not bad. Anyway, from Kyoto Station, aka the Station of Death and Despair*, I took the subway up north and walked over to Kyoto University. I still had approximately a million years before I was meeting up with Steven and Michele, though, so I decided to walk over to Yoshida Shrine, which is right next to Kyoto U.
You know, torii are really awkward to take pictures of if they're on a street and you don't want to get hit by cars.
Yoshida Shrine, by the way, is associated with Yoshida Shinto, i.e. "Japan is the trunk and China is the branches and India is the flowers."
Yoshida Shrine apparently has a preschool associated with it. And by "associated with it" I mean "the preschool is located on the shrine grounds." The advertisement for the shrine says, "In the midst of abundant nature, grow up carefree and learn funly." (Yes, I know funly isn't a word in English, but the word in Japanese is the adverb form of fun.)
Shrines in Kyoto are HUGE, which is why they can have ridiculously long approaches to the actual shrine. Also, in this case there's Yoshida Shrine (and all the associated mini-shrines) and then about a bazillion shrines that are right next to it, as you will see.
Mini-shrines!
You'll see lists of names like this at most shrines. They list people or corporations who have donated to the shrine. At some shrines, they'll put up a new wall of these every time they have a festival.
...and thus began my very long adventure with STAIRS.
This is the main shrine, which is to say THE Yoshida Shrine.
And here's a shot of the parking lot from inside the shrine. The parking lot is shared with the preschool (which you can see the edge of on the right).
More tiny shrines!
These stairs were kind of terrifying, to be honest. Although the fact that I was carrying a huge bag didn't help.
STAIRSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
...and another tiny shrine!
So then I climbed a whole bunch more stairs (some of which were more stair-like than others) and found this playground. Which was apparently on top of a mountain, because in all my stair climbing I had somehow climbed a mountain. Whoo?
So I sat up there for a while to catch my breath, watched the same guy in a grey tracksuit run past me four or five times, and then decided to wander around a bit more.
This torii is positioned over a road. Cars drive through it.
Here's one of the associated shrines I was talking about.
And here's the front of the shrine building.
It's hard to see from this picture, but there was a random cat chilling on the roof of the honden.
WELP, I GUESS MY RESEARCH IS DONE NOW.
This is the approach to an associated Inari shrine.
And here's the Inari shrine.
VERY TINY SHRINE. (This is also an Inari.)
And another tiny shrine.
And a whole hillside of tiny shrines.
Although a lot of these are stone tablets, and not physical buildings.
AND EVEN MORE SHRINES.
So while wandering around, I came across this. On the backs of torii, the date of the torii's construction and the person/family/organization who donated money to build the torii are often recorded.
This one was donated by a cooking club.
The torii in question belongs to this super tiny shrine.
...hey, this one was donated by a cooking club too! HMMMMM.
Oh, well, it's a shrine to the kami of cooking, eating, and drinking. THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING.
(If this shrine had sold an omamori, I would have so bought it.)
So after that it was starting to get dark, so I headed back to Kyoto U., where I met up with Steven. We hung out at his apartment for a while and talked about Research and Life and Fulbright and Kyoto. And then we went to meet Michele for dinner at Bikkuri Donkey. If you've never been to Bikkuri Donkey, I think everything on their menu has hamburger in it. And I don't mean American hamburgers--imagine a fat, oblong hamburger patty with nothing on it. Also, Bikkuri Donkey's interior design scheme would be best described as "Chili's meets Fry's Electronics." Um, yeah. I have no pictures, but you can imagine it in your MINDS. Or Google it.
ANYWAY, for some reason the waiter gave us three pairs of chopsticks and only one fork and spoon, so we had fun trying to figure out who they thought needed a fork. We also probably weirded out the Japanese family next to us, but WHATEVER. Anyway, it was really nice to hang out with the two of them.
In other news, Bikkuri Donkey will actually give you four fries if you order one of the plates with fries. FOUR. No more, no less.
Friday night I crashed on Michele's floor (thank you, Michele!) and then woke up to two earthquakes at about 6:30 a.m. It was exciting. I think I only notice earthquakes when I'm asleep.
*If you have never been to Kyoto Station, you cannot possibly imagine the fear it strikes into the hearts of travelers. It is HUGE and SPRAWLING and doesn't really make much sense at all. Like, why are there a million ways to get onto the JR platform but only one to get onto the Kintetsu? What's the deal with the second floor? Just to illustrate how completely confusing this station is, I once got lost trying to walk through it (i.e. enter on the north side and exit on the south side). Yeahhhhh.
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Kyoto Adventures (part 2): Saturday Morning Adventures
Michele and Steven were going on a hike the next morning, so I wound up leaving Michele's place really early and sitting by the side of the Kamo River to watch the sunrise. It was GORGEOUS, and I highly recommend it, if you're ever up way too early in Kyoto. However, I had one of the most surreal conversations ever.
Random guy: Good morning.
Me: Good morning.
Random guy: Are you American?
Me: Yes.
Random guy: I am an unemployed homeless.
Me: Oh, I see...?
Random guy: [pointing at a crane] Do you know what that bird is called?
Me: Um...duck.* WAIT, NO, CRANE.
Random guy: It's not a duck.
Me: It's a crane.
Random guy: Ducks go like [makes quacking noises].
Me: I know, it's a crane.
Random guy: Bye.
Me: Bye....?
IT WAS REALLY WEIRD.
Anyway, I had 4 hours before I was supposed to meet with Mary, so I decided to walk over to the Kyoto International Manga Museum to see when they opened. As it turned out, they opened at 10 and Mary's train was supposed to get in at 11:14, so I decided to wander toward Kyoto Station and see if I ran into anything interesting. (I also stopped at a Starbucks and got breakfast, because Japanese Starbucks apparently sells food that doesn't taste like sawdust. It's amazing. Unfortunately, the Starbucks was playing All Christmas Music All the Time. And also had signs saying, "Let's Merry!" Yeah.)
Anyway, after a bunch of walking, I ran into Higashi Honganji, which is a temple not far from Kyoto Station. There was no entrance fee, so I decided to go inside and check it out.
Here's the main building.
This picture is almost entirely for Miranda and Shannon and Mary. Because DRAGONS.
A huuuuuuuuuuuge bell at the temple. It, like most bells at temples, is rung 108 times at New Year's to signify the 108 sins of humanity.
Here's the main building from a different angle.
The actual temple was pretty underwhelming. A large section of it is being...drat it, what's the English word? Where you're fixing something and making it like new? It's not refurbishing. I HOPE YOU ALL KNOW WHAT I MEAN, 'CAUSE I'M BLANKING HERE. Anyway, they're doing that so all the treasures inside the building were behind closed doors, which meant that there were a lot of rooms that were just tatami rooms with closed sliding doors. Eh.
RESTORED. That's the word.
However, they did have a giant rope made out of human hair! It was...pretty creepy, actually.
Also, there was this amusing sign on the child's seat in the toilet. It says:
"WARNING
Please follow these rules to be safe.
Don't take your eyes off your child.
Be careful not to pinch your finger.
Don't smoke."
...okay, maybe I'm a little bit too amused by this, but who puts no smoking signs on children's chairs...?
Anyway, aside from the extremely underwhelming temple, there was a really cool exhibit about the life of a woman who was a quadruple amputee but taught herself to sew, knit, and do calligraphy and was a huge advocate of disability support groups in Japan. The exhibit is still running for a little while, so if you find yourself with some free time in Kyoto and you really want to learn about why you should treat gangrene as fast as possible, you should check it out.
This was a sign outside of the temple. Is it just me or does it sound vaguely ominous...? (And, no, it's not Engrish. It says the same thing in Japanese.)
Anyway, I then walked over to Kyoto Station, but it turned out that there had been some sort of trouble with signal lights so all the Shinkansen were EXTREMELY delayed. So Mary's train got in at 11:50 instead of 11:14. Which wouldn't have been a problem except that I had told my host mom that we would be over at noon, and my host family's house is A MILLION MILES AWAY.
*To give myself credit, it's the Kamo River, and "kamo" means "duck."
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Kyoto Adventures (part 3): Saturday Afternoon and Evening Adventures
So after tearing across Kyoto at the fastest speed a subway could carry us and then walking with extreme speed, we arrived at my host family's house where I proceeded to apologize profusely forever. My host mom's reaction was, "Well, you haven't changed at all."*
So I met the girl my host parents are currently hosting, which would make her my....step-host sister? Or something? Anyway, she is really nice, and we talked a bunch, and my host mom made us speak in English (as listening practice for my little host brother, Moto). She had never heard me speak English before (I was on language pledge when I lived with them) and commented that I sound very, very different in English, and my personality is different. Which I cannot argue with.
Speaking of host brothers, THEY ARE HUGE WHAT HAPPENED. Kisa (the older one) shot up about a foot and has started shaving (he's THIRTEEN). Moto (the little one) shot up a bunch too. Otherwise, they are essentially exactly the same as they were when I was staying with them. Moto is still obsessed with Michael Jackson (although now he has also become a ninja cameraman) and Kisa is still obsessed with Harry Potter and soccer.
Also, my host mom is still an amazing cook. She made takoyaki, which are these little dough-and-cabbage-and-octopus ball-shaped things, except hers also had sausage and konnyaku in them which sounds gross but is AMAZING. Seriously, if I could cook a quarter as well as her I would die happy forever. Also, we cooked them on a grill on the table and I think Mary has found a new favorite activity. I must admit that it's kind of insanely fun, because you pour the batter into the mold and then wait and wait and wait and then circle the outside of the mold with a toothpick and flip the takoyaki over and SOMEHOW it becomes a perfect sphere, no matter how inept you are with the toothpick.
So we talked a whole bunch about Life and Boyfriends and Grad School and The Future and How Insanely Large My Host Brothers Are** and Whether You Can Substitute Shijimi for Asari (can I just say that I appreciate that my host mom will totally have culinary conversations with me instead of saying that I cook like an old person?) and The Various Senseis at KCJS and Whether Christian Funerals Are More or Less Depressing Than Buddhist Ones and Whether It's a Good Idea to Not Learn Kanji (It's Really Not). Also, I would just like to state, for the record, that my name and ラブラブ (sort of like "lovey-dovey") probably shouldn't be used in the same sentence unless you're being ironic. JUST SO YOU KNOW.
As I was leaving, my host dad poked his head out of the restaurant*** to say hi to me.**** And then immediately after that:
Host dad: You got skinnier.
Host mom: It's because she's in love.
Host dad: Oh, okay.
Me: WHAT.
ISN'T BEING IN LOVE SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU FATTER (at least if you're a guy)?*****
Anyway, it was good times, and I was reminded of how much I adore my host family and yes.
After that, I managed to fail at finding the tea ceremony museum I visited last time I was in Kyoto, and then we wound up passing Shirahime Shrine. I'd visited before, so I have very limited pictures from this time. In any case, it's a shrine that grants success in sports that are played with balls, which means that it has soccer balls and basket balls and golf balls and baseballs all over the place.
Here's the shrine office.
These are a series of ema from a group of girls who are all on the same high school soccer team.
So after that we checked into our hotel room (at Tour Club Kyoto, which I can highly recommend, especially if you don't speak Japanese) and got dinner. After dinner I met with Takabayashi-san, the leader of my host brothers' Boy Scout troop, and he was kind enough to talk to me for two hours. I will save that story for another time, though, 'cause this blog post is already going to be insanely long.
*That was referring to my apologizing, not my being late, for the record. My host mom is amazing, but also teases me CONSTANTLY. Her most common reasons for teasing me included:
1. My apologizing all the time.
2. Her being taller than me even though I'm American.
3. My being really bad at being stereotypically American.
4. My knowing obscure Japanese terms.
5. My being interested in really obscure Japanese things.
**Host mom: Kisa's gotten taller... Moto's gotten taller... You haven't gotten taller...
Me: I'M TRYING.
***My host family owns a restaurant, which is the downstairs of their house. I got to eat there last time I visited, and I really highly recommend it.
If you want to visit, they have a website!
It's a bit on the pricey side (5,500 yen or 7,000 yen for a course meal at dinner and cheaper for lunch), but well worth your money.
Be aware that my host dad will probably try to talk to you if you sit at the counter, and he's basically incomprehensible if you don't speak Kyoto dialect.
****AND HE HAS HAIR NOW. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT. I guess he was shaving his head before. EVERYTHING I BELIEVED WAS WRONG.
*****The idea is that your girlfriend will start cooking for you and you'll gain weight. So "Have you gained weight?" can be a compliment, hinting that maybe you have a special someone in your life.
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Kyoto Adventures (part 4): Sunday Adventures
Sunday started out with a bang, or, really, with a parfait.
First Japanese parfait I have ever had and DANG IT WAS GOOD. Bizarre, but GOOOOOOOOOOD.
P.S. We are adults which means we can eat parfaits for breakfast. OH YEAH.
And then we hopped on a train and went to Fushimi Inari!
...where there were foxes EVERYWHERE.
...and torii EVERYWHERE.
...and small children in kimono EVERYWHERE because it's shichigosan.
There are ema shaped like torii.
A bunch of kids lined up for shichigosan ceremonies...
Here's the start of the veeeeeeeeeeeery long torii-lined walk all the way around the mountain.
Fox-shaped ema!
People drew faces on them.
And more torii!
Here's the view from near the top of the mountain.
People put their business cards up here to gain success in business. Of course, it turned out that I had given my last business card to Takabayashi-san the previous day. AUGH.
...and more torii!
There were a bunch of huge spiders along the trail.
Japan is not a good place for you if you have a spider phobia.
This fox statue is kind of creepy, to be honest.
Along the trail there are a lot of turn offs which are full of tiny shrines that "belong" to individuals. That doesn't stop anyone else from praying there.
The torii path went around the mountain and through the woods...
Here's a fox statue dressed in the clothes you would normally see on a jizo.
At one of the turn offs there was this random waterfall...
...into a bucket. I think it's for cold water austerities?
STAIRS.
OH MY GODS, GAIJIN. WHAT THE FORK IS YOUR PROBLEM. I am glad you woz 'ere, Keele or whatever your name is, but you do realize that this is a sacred place, right? And when you do this all the other gaijin look bad too? UGGGGGGGGH.
And another huge spider. I would rather be friends with this spider than someone who graffitis torii.
...and descending the mountain...
Here's an interesting mix of a bunch of religious objects from very different religious traditions...
The sign says, "BE WARY OF MOLESTERS."
AUUUUGH.
So then we hopped on a train and went to Nijo Castle, but first we walked to Sanjo, where we passed...
...the giant animatronic crab restaurant. There's one in Nagoya too!
There was a flower exhibition going on at Nijo Castle.
And here's the castle.
And here's more of the castle.
The castle's famous for its "nightingale floors"; the floors...sing...or make this really odd noise when you walk on them. They were made that way so that no one could sneak up on Tokugawa Ieyasu and assassinate him. And, man, there were a lot of people who wanted to assassinate him.
Here's the back of the castle.
And the garden...
...and a moat...
The leaves weren't really changing color yet, as you can probably tell from the pictures.
Heheheheh. I have done my duty.
Anyway, after that I managed to get us really lost for a while before we managed to find a train station and went back to Kyoto station to take the Shinkansen back to our respective cities.
Needless to say, today I was pretty exhausted (and my feet and knees needed a rest).
Moral of the story: I love Kyoto. I'd forgotten how much I love the atmosphere there. It was really awesome to hang out with people. It would have been a lot harder to go back to Nagoya if I weren't so excited for research this week. I will be doing something research related every day this week except Wednesday, I believe, and Wednesday I'll probably be reading, which is research related. I am a huge research nerd.
Anyway, I will end this INSANELY long post now. G'night!
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