Clinics

It is interesting, but the nearest clinic to me looks just like a some kind of spa from the outside. Interestingly enough, across the street from it with a green cross (looks just like a red cross but is green) is a building that looks like a medical clinic. Nope...they sell makeup. And pet fish. I guess that's a little weird.

Oh, and here is my roomate! FINALLY got a picture of him. He's moving out tomorrow! He's got a very cheap rent living with his girlfriend. I hope if I do get a new roomate that they are as nice. I'm very happy for him.

Here's the first picture he let me take:

Culture Day

Today is a holiday in Japan: Culture Day! I went to a local bazaar that was strung through every room and the entire grounds of an elementary at the invitation of Keiko, a very wealthy and active mom and volunteer member of the school community. She's also a darn good English student. So, as my responsibilities as a teacher to my students, and because I was interested in Culture Day, I set out to the schoolgrounds. There were tons of people there. I saw 3 different male Gaigin, all short caucasians, haha. Here they were considered tall and their noses handsome, and I saw at two of them with half-japanese children. I was slightly surprised to see that no females had "married into the system," but there were absolutely no foreign females there. I was totally expecting this what with most Japan-interested females wanting to have cute Japanese children of their own.

What made it "Culture Day" and not just any bazaar? Well...THAT took me a while to figure out. Once stand had curry with POTATOES in it. I know. In Japan. Otherwise it was regular Japanese curry, without curry powder, served in the indentical way as it is every other time. Well, at least they made an attempt. The other thing was...well there were some foreigners on the grounds with their children who obviously attend school there. And...that was it.

What made "Culture Day" confusing? No cultural presentations of any kind that I could see. No writing in non-Japanese, or even traditional styles. No cultural dress of any kind, no cultural music...it was just a bazaar. With potatoes at one curry stand. I did get some rather unwelcomed looks from the moment that I stepped onto the schoolgrounds, which is something I've gotten only occasionally since I've gotten here. This surprised me! I felt welcomed or at very least tolerated even at the Matsuri festival dance right after I got here, but the moment I step onto the schoolgrounds that I was invited to, I was getting looks that were not friendly. I stayed only long enough to look the place over good, see if I could learn anything. I didn't. I was really disappointed by it all. I know that we tend to treat culture like the Borg from Star Trek in America, assimilating it through destruction, generally. This was beyond that. This felt like it was their holiday. And that it wasn't my place. Apparently the one other foreign guy without an obvious kid there got the idea that I did, because he sat waiting outside the fence almost immediately after he arrived, probably waiting for his wife and/or kid that were inside. He also looked disappointed. We shared a quick look, and although I don't think he was a native English speaker by his appearances, I got the idea that my impressions might be right.

I've only gotten two friendly looks all day. One was from Keiko for seeing that I came, and the other was from my favourite bakery next to my bank and the train station. Oh well. You learn something new every day, eh? I've had better holidays than today though.

Kyoto Part Two

The later part of the day in Kyoto

The first part was a visit to Sanjuusan Temple (lit. Thirty-Three). No pictures allowed. Oh well. Here, 1001 life-size statues of Buddah exist. The bodies of each have 20 hands, each which represents 50 words (1000 words). Interesting that that means each statue is worth 1000 words? Possible etymological roots from the common source of India (like Indo-European). Might be a stretch. But an interesting coincidence at very least. Each statue is hand-carved wood, with the arms made and fitted separately, then the whole thing is guilded. That's for 1000 of these statues. Each face is different, and most are at least 850 years old, some over 1000 years old. It is kept fairly dark, but you can see many thousands of spikes from their crowns prickling the long room as you enter.

There are also a number of other natural treasures, larger "guardian" gods. The Storm god looks like he's giving the formal salute of "Bob." Just that would have been worth it alone, not that the thing wasn't worth it in every way!

At the center of the whole thing is the 1001st statue, a gigantic buddah sitting in a lotus with a volume greater than my kitchen. All guilded, with candles and incense everywhere. This temple, as the arrows and histories show, hosted Kyuu-do (Archery) contests for Samurai from all over Japan for a long time. The world's record is also around 1000 years old, held by a Samurai that for this (24 hour long!) contest of skill, shot about 86% of 13,000-something arrows in the uncomfortable position that Kyuu-do requires of it's archers.

Between this and Kiomizu Temple, we learned a couple things:

These 5 bars mean the highest level of temples. This was one created under the mandates of the "Monk Emperor" of about 1000 years ago. Kyoto was the center of Japan at the time, and capital. He was so religious that he decided that in addition to being emperor, it was also his duty to become a priest. He remained priest even after his appointment as emperor had finished and the duties had been passed on.

There are over 330 shrines and temples in Kyoto. Wowies. Like the Vatican of Japan. This was just another that we passed among many.

Finally, we stopped off at Kiomizu. You have to hike up a large part of the mountain to get to it, at a point about 1/2 way up the mountain. The shops LINE the narrow streets, trying to pick off tourists everywhere. We ignored them. Then we came to the main gate of Kiomizu temple. Mizu means water. Likewise, this temple is revered for it's 3 springs that when drank supposedly grant (depending on which you drink from) Wealth, Health, or Romantic Prosperity. It is now known that these water sources for the shrine actually all have the same origin, but the tradition remains regardless. Traditionally, people will travel to Kyoto just to get a drink from one of the three, from which many stories of morality, folly, and tales of wisdom are surely scupted from. This place is so well-known that some common metaphors and phrases in the Japanese language contain this places name and some of its more remarkable features.

Here is the main gate.


I could see a nice tower in the background, so I tried to get a shot of it while fighting through the crowd.


This one turned out better though.


I made it up to the tower, and between photo-ops of different groups, I managed to get a great picture of this pagoda, all 3 stories of glory and interesting modification for a lightning rod that seems very suitably traditional. Nobody in the picture, thanks to the group rotations on the scene. Lu-cky!


I managed to get another after the people had flooded back in, so I took it from a more distant point and a different angle.


This is another beautiful building on the temple grounds.


And another.

We walked past that last one to the veranda, a sloped balcony which is the source of many romances, and the phrase "I feel like jumping off of the Kiomizu Veranda balcony." What does that mean exactly?


It means that you are crazy. You'd hit and roll down that thing in a pile. They say that those that used to do it did it as a proof of the strength of their love and of the fate they believed that they had. Well, if I survived that, I'd sure believe that fate was on MY side! I turned away from the drop to look back at the Kyoto that we had ascendeded from. You can see Kyoto Tower there, with it's modern trappings, famous pollution protocols, and short buildings (they have maximum airspace height requirements that are very strict I understand). It was about to get dark.

A ways down the Veranda, I saw the famous spring below. Well, that is almost a survivable fall. Instead of jumping, we continued on. No jumpers today. Good. I'd rather keep my limbs and internal organs anyways. I don't feel I need to prove to Brandy that I can become vegetative for her in order to prove my love and that fate is on my side. Having her just makes that itself obvious to me anyways.

Night upon us, I turned back to Kyoto to see it pleasantly lit up with low-pollution lights. Harder to catch on camera? Yeah...especially considering the whole "night" thing.

We rounded around to the bottom by stairs towards the back edge of the Veranda. I managed to get a pretty good night piture of the spouts. You basically walk under these troughs covered in aroom that come out of the mountain, grad a UV-cleansed pole with a cup on the end, and take your once-a-year drink. Chosing wisely is a topic of much discussion. Since people go with family or friends usually, the air was abuzz over the wisdom of their fellows (or folly!) for chosing any one. None of them are "wrong answers" by themselves, and non e is intrinsically superior. Chosing the right one is a matter of importance since each is a blessing. I waited in line, got a drinking-rod, chose "health," deposited the stick, and left. Too much economic prosperity isn't a good thing for an educator, and without health, money means little. I already have a romantic blessing, so I had no reason to choose that one. So health was the way to go for me. Kyoko seemed impressed in some way.

When I asked my Japanese teacher, Nishi-sensei (also my English student, "Michiko-san," and the one who took me to to my first Buddist temple, Kongoo-ji) which she had picked, she smiled at me with a funny look and said: "I was greedy." I figured this meant "I chose 'wealth.'" I was mistaken. She explained: "I drank from all three!" Oh well. Funny, she had told me earlier that she had her health, and she obviously has some wealth, and of course wouldn't mention romance in public directly, but...wow! I sure was surprised. But, it is a sensei's responsibility to take the fall if something goes wrong. I'm just surprised by her "phasing of her good judgement." So she felt she had to fess up to me as her teacher. Amazing how the rush of power from this old religious rite can invest people with a true power-trip due to greed o f what is right at hand. Doesn't really hurt anyone, but it was still interesting to see just how seriously people of Japan still believe in the power of these things.

Afterwards, we went to get some food, and we stopped at a restarant, a small place whose front room had 3 tables for two and one meant for 9. We of course took the big one and squeezed in about 12!

The center of the table was what made the place special...an enormous kettle holder over a large sand pit carved into the table. The kettle was large, but nothing unusual, as you'll see below.

And that beam stretches all the way to the opposite wall. This mangled prank of Pices has to be one of the most strangely unneccesarily elaborate things I have seen in my life. Still, it makes the place easy to find if I ever wanted to eat there again. It's the only one with THIS thing in it, I am sure, and it is the only one which you can see the potholder from angles you can't even begin to see the table!

So that was Kyoto. We didn't hardly scratch the surface, but I learned alot, and it was alot of fun.

Kyoto

This is the first half of the day I spent in Kyoto. Pretty amazing...the pictures will tell more than I will attempt to.

These are from the giant Shinto gate marking the way to the giant Shinto shrine we went to in Kyoto, called "Hee-an"



The huge front gate of He-an.

Japan wrapped up in a picture: forested mountains with civilization popping up where it can, the modern fused with the old. Ancient Japanese Shinto beliefs are right along side concerts, as this venue set up inside one of the most sacred Shinto sites shows so clearly.

Roofs in an inner building of He-an

These are from the garden of He-an. One even has a picture of me, as rare as that is. The first is upside down. I feel like the place has such an air of peace to it that it could be raining skinned cows on parachutes and it would still feel you are like walking on clouds. It is said that crossing the waters of the lakes here feels like riding a dragon. Now, I haven't ridden a dragon, but the place is so peaceful as to make the rest of Japan that I have been to feel like a warzone by comparison.

Nijo-jo (Nijo Castle): Seat of the Tokugawa Shogunate

Outer Wall: All big castles in Japan have huge stones with steep slopes on their sides.


North Face of Ninomaru Palace

Front Gate

SW Watchbuilding, from the street

South Face of the Palace

Inner Gate of Nijo

I'm glad I was trained in wood work, especially in college. I could see that Nijo was made using almost entirely the finest of Japanese pines, up to 1000 years old. The expression for the quality of the wood is this: "Make a building of 1000 year old Japanese cypress, and it will last another 1000. This is actually an underestimation for the best of cypress. We couldn't take any pictures inside the Ninomaru castle, and we weren't allowed to enter the garden (Ninomaru garden is one of the most famous in history, moonlighting in anime, video games, novels, and manga, with its 3 islands, Turtle Island, Crane Island, and The Island of Eternal Happiness). Still, every nightengail song floorboard told a story. Each was large, yet unequal in cut to the next. They were flat in most places, excepting in one hallway where I could see that the wood had expanded and contracted as a result of being completely waterlogged in the event of some catastrophic rainstorm, possibly an errant typhoon. Like all major buildings, we were barefoot, and the feel of the wood, with it's winter wood pushing out or not, felt good under my feet. The rooms were tall, and every inch of wall was painted by a master painter. I could see where subsequent boards had been laid from the same tree, and where they had alternated, showing multiple work crews during some times, delays in building from something coming up, when the hard times hit for finding enough flawless cypress, and even the order in which the buildings were built and connected to form the palace. It is majestic and flawless, yet, even old grain tells all. I never thought in shop class, or even in "Non-Metallic Processes" in college would have given me so much insight over the rest of my mostly-native companions on the trip. I'd like to give a personal, sincere thanks to my shop teachers right now.