The Center of the Universe? I vowed never to use that phrase

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06/7/17

Gion Matsuri!! Holy crap did I have a fantastic weekend! I got to Kyoto at 10 AM on Saturday morning. The first I did was drop my luggage off at Maki’s room and take a rest (I woke up at 6 to get there before the huge rush). I was actually feeling a little sick, but Maki was great about it. I kept apologizing for us having to take breaks about every half an hour for me to sit and get things under control (btw, it was nothing serious, though if Laurel and Ishani are reading this—remember what I was like in Florida?) and she kept reassuring me that it was OK because she lives and Kyoto and can see these things anytime she wants. Anyway, we first went to Ritsumeikan Daigaku (her university) for lunch at the dining hall. It was good food!!! I was shocked, and yet not shocked. The Japanese are so picky about what they eat. I liked the feel of the university, though admittedly I didn’t get a great feel for it because I only had lunch. Maki and I did get a chance to talk about universities in general, and where would be a good place to do research if I got the Monbusho scholarship. Kyoto has a lot going for it—publishing houses (probably even traditional ones), lots of folk connections (if I don’t do women’s lit, I want to do children’s lit), and lots of friends. And I hate to admit it, but there is one in Tokyo that would be good, and possibly better. I hate even more to admit that it’s Waseda. I know it’s a good school, but…. Anyway, it has a world renowned lit program, an art program (which would be helpful in studying the artwork in children’s lit), and turns out remarkable creative writers, so they probably know the importance of children’s lit. Tokyo doesn’t have a folksy feel as far as I know, though. Granted I’ve only spent one and a half weekends there, and one half was wasted taking care of someone’s COLD (I’ll never do that again for anyone! Suck it up and walk five minutes to the store yourself. I am not a slave, damn it.), so I am not an expert. Perhaps my friends in Tokyo next semester can give me some insights. Either way, it was nice to talk to someone in the university system about these types of things.

After lunch we went to the Ritsumeikan Peace Museum. It’s the only university in Japan that has its own peace museum, and Maki was excited that I wanted to go. It’s quite critical of war (even Japanese actions in WWII, which the Japanese are normally touchy about) and was incredibly moving. I can’t really describe it—you kind of have to go. And everyone should go to Kyoto once in their life; trust that I will explain my feelings about Kyoto more fully later in this entry.

After the museum we hit the Ryoanji—a temple famous for its rock garden. It is carefully raked with a design (everday I think) and has 15 large stones. But! You can’t see all of them at one time. It’s supposed to be a very philosophical place. Temples are places of meditation usually, so that makes sense. The Ryoanji is Zen temple, so especially so. Walking around the place, I felt an aura of solemnity. It was utterly silent, except for the rain and thunder. Perhaps the solemnity was largely due to the weather, but I was impressed by it. It’s a well visited place, the wood was so smooth where we walked—polished by many feet I’m sure. The garden was so calming that I felt like I could stay there forever and that I didn’t want to leave because I wasn’t worried about anything. But the kicker then was how long can the beauty of a garden keep someone content? I don’t know. The wash basin for the tea room is inscribed with the saying ‘I learn only to be contented,’ so maybe the point is that a garden can’t make you happy unless you choose to let it, in which case you a spiritually wealthy and destined to be, well, content whatever you do. I need to look into this Zen thing. I may come back a Buddhist. ^ -

Next on the agenda was the Kinkakuji, another of the most famous places in Kyoto. It’s another temple, with a fantastic garden and pond. The building contains three different styles of architecture, and contained in the top two styles are Japanese lacquer coated with goldleaf!! Unfortunately the current building is about 50 years old—the original burnt down—and the technique that allowed to building to stay coated for hundreds of years was lost so they have to keep recoating it every 20 or 30 years. That was a really over-simplified explanation.

Anyway, that night we hit Gion for a little to look at the yama and hoko that would make up the parade on Monday—and we had crepes with macha ice cream and kinako in them. There are so many interesting sights on the streets I can’t even begin to describe them. And the crowds were phenomenal. Dangerously crowded. Literally. In Kobe a few years ago things were similarly crowded and a bunch of people fell at once and ended up injuring and killing many people. Anyway, there were people selling taco-yaki, okonomiyaki, yakisoba, ringo ame (candied apples…and budou ame…grapes) goldfish games, vendors selling fans and maps and drinks and Disney stuff and big inflatable balloons that looked like tea or soda bottles (I should have taken a picture, because I can’t explain.) Also, there were a ton of people in yukata, and wearing flashing-light jewelry. I have no idea how that works. And I discovered that my friend’s hobby is taking pictures of garbage—of which there was much!! We were taking a break on the side of the road next to a trash can, and she started snapping pictures. Cute.  We went back soon after that though, without doing much, because I felt sick.

Sunday was much busier than Saturday! We went to the Tenryuji, Nonomiya jinja, a torokko around Arashiyama (a wonderfully scenic mountain), Kiyomizudera (including the love shrine), visited a shopping arcade the name of which I’ve forgotten, and saw the Yasaka shrine which is associated with the matsuri. Everyone who participates in the parade purifies themselves there. Also, we walked around in the even more crowded streets of Gion later that night. More of that later. I also got to see a train being driven—the old fashioned way like in a video game I played with Matt once. Damn, he needs to get out of this journal. It’s too bad he’s been to Japan. Oh well. It was so cool!! This particular train was almost like a bus. It was only one car long, it cost a fixed 200 yen if rode from one end to the other or if you rode just to the next stop, and if you wanted to depart at a station you had to press a button or the exit wouldn’t open. It was required to stop at every station, but not necessarily to let people out.

The Tenryuji has a wonderfully manicured garden, another place that made me think I could be happy there forever. Even more impressive, though, was the dragon painted on the ceiling in the temple. It was painted in the Happou nirami style so that no matter where you are standing in the temple, it appears that the dragon is staring right at you. Yes, I did run around in circles to test this. It was mind-boggling. And dizzying.

I don’t rightly remember much of Nonomiya Jinja, but we stopped and prayed using go-en (go-en is the name of the 5 cent coin, synonymous in pronunciation with good luck, hence using them as prayer offerings—quite contrary to the ‘you need to pay a lot of money for it to work’ advice someone once gave me) for luck and contentment. Also, Maki bought a necklace from a street vendor, and we saw another vendor that made really realistic looking mushrooms and stuff out of paper. I would have taken a picture, but it wasn’t allowed.

As for the torokko around Arashiyama—it was a very scenic train ride following the river around the mountain—and a walk through a bamboo forest. SO BEAUTIFUL. I would almost go as far as to say that I felt ethereal when I was there. There is something special about bamboo—very smooth, I guess. There was a man on the train wearing a mask, I think of a kami-sama, who went around wishing people happiness. He wished for me to become happy in Japan—which doesn’t mean that I’m unhappy, but that Japanese and English grammar don’t match up. Oh, and we saw some porcelain figures being sold on the streets near the Arashiyama Station—religious relics and a porcelain rendition of a post box. Strange Japan? I think so.

We went to lunch at a vegetarian/Buddhist cuisine restaurant. Kyoto is famous for its tofu—with so many temples and people who couldn’t eat meat Kyoto-ites had to be good at working with alternatives. It was quite delicious.

The Kiyomizudera is another ridiculously famous temple where you can drink the water for luck. I would have, but we were running short on time and the line was long (stupid tourists, eh? Not like me…). I did last time I was there, though. I daresay it worked—I graduated on time, with fantastic friends, healthy, not wealthy, and not wise (but at least educated!!). We also went to the love shrine that is there, but the temple closed before I could do any of the superstitious stuff, like trying to find the love stone with my eyes closed. Perhaps it’s for the better.

The shopping arcade is really busy! It was especially so due to rain and the fact that it was a covered arcade. There was a little bit of everything—a food market complete with ‘you can only get in Kyoto specialties’ like macha and azuki pocky, Harajuku-style goth clothing, geisha pictures, trendy expensive clothing boutiques, pickle shops, sock shops, cute knick knacks and toys…I could go on forever. It really had everything. In fact, I saw nothing in Tokyo that I didn’t also see in Kyoto (except maybe the quantity of skyscrapers and public transit), and in Kyoto I saw so much more!! Meiji Jingu doesn’t compare to anything Kyoto has.

Kyoto also has much more refined speech patterns than anywhere else I’ve been. My speech is really crude and inaka (country). People in Kyoto are polite all the time!! Japanese has a system of honorifics—you add o to the beginning of words with Japanese roots to make them polite and honored, and go to things of Chinese root. Some words are always spoken with the honorific (ocha—tea, gohan—cooked rice), but most, like tsukemono (pickles), miso, kome (uncooked rice) are spoken without it. Not so in Kyoto. Everything had the bloody honorifics, and the majority people speak in a mostly distal style, and apologize more often with more humility.

I want to live in Kyoto. I’m going back. Maybe during o-bon.

Anyway, to the heart of the matter—Sunday night. The night before the big day. There are 31 floats in the parade—all of which can be looked at the night before. You can buy o-mamori (good luck charms & more honorifics!! I always just say mamori. Also, each float has its own theme—safety, meeting people, etc) and tour some of them. They’re hung with tapestries, and in the hoko musicians play gagaku music. You do have to pay the equivalent of 10 dollars to go inside, but YES. I certainly did. This isn’t advertised anywhere—you have to stumble into it—so for those of you who may one day want to go, it exists. Do it. The one I entered had a western style tapestry woven (I think) shortly after the arrival of the Dutch (when Japan was impressed with the west). It also had a Korean style and one traditional Japanese style. After that we pushed our way through the streets a little and watched children sing advertisements for each float’s mamori. It was cute!! They jumped and sang and were utterly excited.

After that we decided that the streets were too crowded and went down the side streets to eat street vendor food and look at interesting shops and things. That was really the highlight of the weekend, because it rained on the parade (Monday) so all the tapestries were covered in plastic. Also, I had to leave by noon to get to work on time at 3:30, even it was also a NATIONAL HOLIDAY. Umi no hi. No one has to go to school or work, but me (and my co-workers). Shiyou ga nai, ne. It can’t be helped.

My camera sucks, by the way. I’m so glad she’s sharing some pictures with me. I have to remember to ask her about pictures of the performers on the street—with the dragon masks. And for the kami-mask wearing guy on the train. While I was trying to transfer my pictures to my computer, I got a message. “Tranfer interrupted. Reason: Catastrophic Failure”. That strikes me as pretty damn funny. My camera wasn’t the greatest to begin with. Maybe while I’m in the heartland of state-of-the-art technology I’ll get a new one.

Oh, and one last thing. With the rain, the heat finally broke!

Ok, my loves, that’s it for now. mata yomi ni kite ne! I miss you.
Pictures coming soon. I promise.

06/7/18

My boss is officially nuts. I work at the Kariya school on Mondays and Tuesdays (a twenty minute drive but an hour train commute from my house). Monday kind of makes sense, as far as hours. Tuesday, however, I teach a one hour course from 2-3, a half hour course from 4:50-5:20, and a one hour course from 7:15-8:15. I am there all bloody day, but I only teach 2 ½ hours. The commute alone is about 13 dollars. It’s a waste to send me there, from an economical standpoint. The only explanation I can come up with is that perhaps the first class requested me as their professor. I subbed for their regular teacher once, and after that I became their regular teacher. I know they had fun in the class I taught, because instead of the normal formalized conversation with the receptionist before they left they were loud and said it was ‘tanoshikatta’—fun. Still, it’s annoying to sit around for 3 hours with nothing to do!!

I’ve officially given up on one of my students. I plan on her not participating. She’s a bitch, to be perfectly honest. She says things about me in Japanese because she thinks I don’t understand, and I don’t feel like it’s worth it to correct her. It won’t change anything. From now on, I’ll offer her the opportunity to participate, but I won’t spend too much time waiting for her to answer.

Also, I need someone to knock some sense into me. I’m not sure if it is my parent’s urging, or if it’s some kind of loneliness/homesickness, or what, but I suddenly want to get married and have kids and that jazz. That was not in my plan, and I don’t have any prospects anyway! Maybe I’m being a nonsense. In fact, I’m certain I’m being a nonsense.  And as soon as my mom quits insinuating that she needs grandchildren soon, I think it’ll all go away. I don’t think she even realizes how pushy she is about it—or that she does it so often, but I am not going to get back with an old boyfriend just because she wants grandkids.

I took a Japanese Proficiency test today—a practice one, of a level I was pretty certain I’d already aced. I was right. That made me happy. Tomorrow I’ll test the next level. I’m going to Nagano ken on the 24th for an interview, so I want to have an idea of what skill level of Japanese I can claim.

Speaking of which, my adult students had a hard time not speaking in Japanese today, so after the second burst of Japanese (which was something about all of the people in their generation) I asked them what about their generation they were talking about. After that they were impressed with my Japanese, but they began to explain things to me in Japanese if they were really struggling. Ooops!! Also, one of them wasn’t talking much. I need to figure out a way to pull her in more. She’s older, and kind of shy. I’ll figure something out.

I love life. What can I say? Nothing is ever perfect, and certainly Japan isn’t, but I am pretty content. And there isn’t much more to life than that. Maybe contentment and the triangle shaped candy from Kyoto.

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Photos

Kinkakuji
This is me and Maki at Kinkakuji. Look at the goldleaf!! So gorgeous.

Ryoanji
Rock Garden!!

Torokko
Happiness? At least he's cool looking. Love the mask!

Bamboo Forest
Just, wow. I didn't know that bamboo grew this tall.

Arashiyama Station
What a cute, old fashioned train!

Kiyomizudera
Famous Temple...with a love shrine!

Maiko-san!
Apprentice Geisha

The Shrine that Started it All
This is the main shrine associated with the Gion Festival. I decided not to go in, because I didn't think I:d be able to see anything.

Inside the Hoko with the awesome music
Inside the hoko, with the musicians playing gagaku music!

hoko=parade float
The lights of one of the hoko the night before the parade. The lanterns are very cool, ne?

Toy of Hoko
This was a toy in the Meiji period--a miniature version of the actual hoko in the parade. One of those jewels of the side streets.