Iris – Page 111 – goinggaijin.com

Ato Matsuri

Yesterday was another busy day, it was the day of Ato Matsuri, the second parade of Gion Festival. It has ten floats, somewhat smaller than those of the first, the Saki Matsuri parade that happened one week prior, and although it takes the same route, it does so in the other direction. At the very end of the Ato Matsuri parade, there was a newly constructed O-fune yama, a boat-shaped float that always comes at the end of the procession. It is based on the traditional O-fune yama which unfortunately had burnt down a number of years ago and, as there was already a Fune-yama to end Gion Matsuri, it was not needed for the last 50 years and thus had not been rebuilt. This year, however, it had its reappearance and a new boat was built – for a total of 120 million yen – and decorated with some of the old tapestries that had survived the fire. You could immediately tell that there was something special about this float – you could still smell the new wood used in its construction.

Right after the ten floats, there came the floats of the so-called Hanagasa, the flower hat or flower umbrella procession, which starts from Yasaka shrine, goes through the inner city, joins the Ato Matsuri parade for two streets and then returns to Yasaka shrine. In the beginning, there were a number of small children carrying small mikoshi, probably some of the many deities that reside in Yasaka shrine. It seemed that the kids had big fun, and they even tried to emulate the mikoshi carrying of the adults by lifting the mikoshi onto their shoulders.

Behind them, there came a number of more serious adults dressed in beautiful kimono or other traditional garb and accompanying little floats decorated with flowers and umbrellas. They were beautiful, but, to be honest, I would have preferred to see real flowers rather than the obviously artificial ones that were used.

I met with a friend at 8:30, one hour before the start of the procession, and although there were not so many people as a week ago, we were lucky to still get a place in the third row at one of the street corners. The whole parade took about 2 hours to pass us by, and once again my friend was very taken by the turning of the large hoko around the corner. Unfortunately, after standing in a tight spot for all but three hours, I had developed a terrible backache, and I was very happy that the parade was over and we could go to lunch – sushi again, in the same restaurant as the week before.

My friend then went home to Kobe, until Osaka he planned to ride his bike along the river, I hope everything turned out as he had planned. I went home also, and because of the backache (which lasted well into the night, I am obviously getting old), I did not attend soroban class that evening, and I also skipped the Kanko-Sai, the returning of the three mikoshi to Yasaka shrine in the night.

6th Kyu!

I’ve passed my first soroban exam!

I am from now on the proud bearer (owner?) of a 6th student’s (or 6th kyu) degree of soroban. I received my results yesterday, I scored multiplication/division/addition 130/140/150 points from a maximally possible 150 points each, and I needed 100 points per section to pass the exam. Together with the results I also received a little orange sticker bearing the 6th kyu, which many kids put on the side of their soroban.

And now? Well, more of the same. I already bought a book with exercises for the 5th kyu level (the student or kyu levels are counted down, the highest one is thus 1st kyu; the next higher level would be first dan. Yes, it’s the same grading system as in many martial arts). The only difference now is the size of the numbers: Up to 4 digits for addition/subtraction and multiplication, up to 5 for division. According to my sensei, the 5th kyu level addition and subtraction is the one where the kids have most problems with – the allowed time stays the same, but if they calculate too fast, they make too many mistakes, and if they slow down, they do not make the cutoff of 10 correct answers… We will see how I will do. I think my sensei will only allow me to take the test if he’s sure I will pass it.

I know this may sound strange to people less nerdy than I am, but I really enjoy doing this!

Umi No Hi

Today is the third Monday in July, which marks the holiday umi-no-hi, usually translated as Marine Day or Ocean Day or Sea Day. It was first celebrated as a national holiday in 1996 in remembrance of a sea-voyage the Meiji emperor took on July 20th 1876, where he went on a steam ship along the coast of Tohoku all the way up to Aomori prefecture and even Hokkaido before returning to Yokohama.

Before that, it was simply called Marine Memorial Day and even today it is meant to consider the importance the ocean has on an island country like Japan (which is one of the major harvesters of seafood and fish, by the way).

Since 2003, it has been moved in to the third Monday of July in accordance with the “Happy Monday” system.

Weekend!

The last three days were very busy, I was on my feet – literally – for more than eight hours each day… When I came home last night I was so tired, I went to bed at around ten, hence the delay in my report, but here it is, finally:

Wednesday night was the last evening of the yoiyama for the Saki matsuri parade. Just like last year, from 6 pm the streets of the inner city where the floats had been built were closed for traffic, and were turned into a huge pedestrian area. It was very crowded; when I looked from Yasaka shrine over Shijo street, it was filled with people, the heads of the Japanese turning the space into a black mass. It had been a very hot day and it was a lovely night, but because it was so crowded, the feeling was more hectic and much less relaxed than last year.

I had fun though, trying out new street food: pancakes made from takoyaki batter, rolled up and then topped with all sorts of condiments. I had one with mayo, parsley, dried fish flakes, and ketchup, thus each bite tasted differently. Altogether, there were at least four different types. For safety reasons I did not try the one with the fried egg on top: although seemingly delicious, the yolk still looked rather runny… Also, I have to admit that I succumbed to shopping and bought a tengui, a traditional, thin Japanese towel, that was sold at the stand of the boat-float, which always comes last in the parade. I bought this one because I really liked the phoenix on it, what do you think:

The biggest novelty – and one that my inner treehugger is especially happy about – were the ECO-stations placed at exits and large crossings of the pedestrian area. When I bought the pancake, I received it in a little dish made from very sturdy plastic and I already thought it was a shame to throw it away after single use. Only then did I discover the ECO-stations, where one could return these dishes to have them washed and reused directly. What a wonderful idea! I hope they’ll keep it up and they can be seen at many matsuri to come!

Thursday started very early and ended very late… A friend of mine came up from Kobe and because we wanted a decent spot on a corner to watch the parade, we met at 8 am – and were still about 30 minutes late for the perfect spot, which was reached by the parade only at 9:30… My friend was amazed by the big fuss that was made to turn the naginata hoko around the corner. However, she was not quite as patient as I had been the year before, and so we gave up our front row spot after about an hour of watching, and we walked along Shijo dori towards the other floats of the parade. I showed her my favourite one (topped with the praying mantis), and she was especially excited about the boat-shaped Ofune hoko, traditionally ending the parade, because it looks so different from all the others.

We then had sushi for lunch, and when we left the restaurant at 12:30, we could still see the last floats leaving Kawaramachi street. We then went through Gion to my favourite temple where we relaxed a little before she went to the station where she had booked a tea-ceremony, and I headed back home.

After a nap that felt hardly longer than 10 minutes, I was up and about again to go to my soroban class – it was the big exam day, remember! We conducted it almost like we do a normal class; first a short mental calculation warmup, then the test. It went well, no big surprises, although I was a bit nervous. I could leave right after the test was over as I was so tired, it must have shown. I think at that time my sensei already knew whether I had passed or not, but he said I would get the result only next Tuesday. You are thus still allowed to keep your fingers crossed!

Yesterday, on Friday, I went to a friend’s place at 10:30. She had an invitation for the opening of the summer exhibition at MIHO Museum and had invited me to come along. Miho museum is about a 90 minutes drive from Kyoto, situated in the middle of mountains. it is a privately owned museum, founded by and named after what was at that time the richest woman of Japan. The special exhibition centres around two large tapestries (probably two metres by one), depicting a Kwannon – the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy – and a sitting, pensive Buddha. The tapestries were hand-woven for the museum after two old images, and you can see the original paintings as well as statues and other related objects of art.

The permanent exhibition is exquisite, albeit small. They have a beautiful little statue of Horus, made from silver, gold, and lapis lazuli, that apparently was once the main deity of an Egyptian temple. There was also a standing Buddha statue, some 2.5 metres high I guess, upper body leaning forward just a little bit. It gave me the impression of a father stooping down a little to his children. I really enjoyed the trip although it took much longer than I had expected. The museum is certainly worth a visit, even though it is a bit far from Kyoto.

Now, those were my last three days. Today I had planned a rest day; from Monday on there will be the second yoiyama before the Ato matsuri parade. It should be much more quiet though, but I hope the friend with whom I will watch it will like it too.

Matsuri!

I have just returned from the last evening of yoiyama where I – and approximately 10.000 other people – went to the city to have a look at all the floats that will be presented in the big Saki matsuri parade tomorrow. I went around through the city for about 6 hours and I am very tired right now…

Tomorrow, I will meet a friend to go and see the parade, and I’ll have to get up quite early for this one, hence, I will not write much more tonight.

You will get a big summary of this year’s Saki matsuri and preceding yoiyama on Friday. Good night!

Prayers

It is mid July – and that means that for a whole month Kyoto is in the grips of Gion Matsuri! Even with the Grand Parade having been split into two parades, the Saki parade on the 17th and the Ato parade on the 24th, I would still say that the main event – the Saki matsuri – is happening this week.

In fact, today is the first day of yoi-yama, the three days, or rather, evenings, that lead up to the Saki matsuri on the 17th. I was not planning to go to town tonight, mainly because I am not sure whether there will be the large pedestrian zone during all three nights, or only for the last one. Also, there have been short but heavy rain showers in the afternoon and also now in the evening, and I am still hoping for better weather.

I did go to Yasaka (or Gion) shrine in the late afternoon though, because I know that the food stalls there are open already and I wanted to have something nice for dinner. It turned out that I came at the right time: Just when I arrived, there was a long row of people waiting at the entrance to Yasaka shrine. It turned out that those were the members of the Naginata-hoko group (the one float that will lead the Saki matsuri parade on Thursday) and that they, together with the chigo (the most important boy during Gion matsuri, he will perform a number of rites throughout this month and will ride on the Naginata-hoko) went to Gion shrine to pay their respects to the Gods – meaning that they would go to each and every shrine in the precincts to offer a short prayer. I am not entirely sure, but I would guess that the other groups from the other yama and hoko floats will be doing the same in the next two days.

Of course, this would not be Japan if there would be no big group picture, and I also got a few of my own… In the back you can see the three mikoshi that will be moved from the shrine to the Otabisho on Thursday evening, which is the main event of Gion matsuri, from a religious point of view.

Typhoon?

I have seen that in several European media there has been coverage about the typhoon that was passing over Japan during the last few days. There were indeed serious disasters along the path of the typhoon, especially in the south-eastern parts of Japan, in Okinawa and in Kyushu, with even seven victims.

However, it seems that Kyoto lies in a favoured part of the country; at least this time we could not feel any effects of the typhoon at all. The storm – or rather, its offshoots – was supposed to hit Kyoto yesterday, today at the latest, but – nothing. Not even rain, just a bit more wind than usual at this time of the year. The only thing noticeable – and I’m not even sure it was related to the typhoon at all – was a clearing of the clouds from Tuesday on, and this brought sunshine and increased humidity. A friend told me that yesterday evening – at a time when I was busy with my soroban class, so I missed it – there was an evening sky so blue it was almost unreal.

By now, however, we are back to grey skies… So, don’t worry about me, everything is back to normal, actually, it has hardly deviated from normal at all.

Writing

I am very busy these days with lots of writing assignments, some of them self-imposed, some of them from the outside…

For one, I have to write a journal detailing my soroban classes. While not every class needs a long writeup, I like to write at least a short summary quicly, so I can later point to it and say: Well, that’s what I’ve done!

Second, I have been busy for a couple of months now working on a larger translation project, self-imposed, sure, but I don’t want to take forever with it. Also, I have now found some people to help me with corrections, and I cannot keep them waiting forever. I will write a more detailed post about this when the work is further along.

Third, a friend of mine urged me to do some creative writing of my own, saying that it may be a good thing for me to do right now and that there may never be a better time to do that. Hence, I took her advice and try to get some things off my chest, and I am considering to write an alphabiography for that purpose.

Finally, I am still committed to this blog, although as you see, by the end of the day I am rather tired of writing, and, as I am not getting out much, there are not that many news to report at the moment. Please bear with me for a while.

However, maybe it won’t take that long, as next week will be the main parade of Gion matsuri, and also yoiyama the night before, and in the evening of the day of the parade I will have my soroban test and the day after I will go with a friend to the opening of a new exhibition at Miho museum…

It really seems being busy comes in waves, and I’m surfing up one right now…

Steam

I had a great day last Saturday. Friends of mine from Kobe came over and together we went to the Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum close to Kyoto station.

It’s absolutely brilliant – I love steam locomotives! The museum was opened in 1972 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the opening of Japanese railways – the first railway connection ran between Tokyo and Yokohama in 1872. It consists of the old Nijo station building, a beautiful wooden construction that has been moved to this place from its original spot, a fan-shaped locomotive house with a turntable at the centre point that houses almost all of the engines, and a large outdoor space containing a few more exhibits and a short rail track. The museum houses about 20 old steam locomotives, and about half of them are still operational. One of those is used to pull a small train along the one kilometre long rail track mentioned above three times a day, probably one of the major attractions of the museum.

The non-working locomotives can be entered, they are in a rather good shape, and I took many pictures of their in- and outside. I grew up in a town with a large railway station, my grandfather worked in the shunting area there, and although I am too young to have lived in the steam age, my grandfather took me on railtrips all through Austria, and I always loved – and probably always will love – trains. Often, we like to think our own era as the pinnacle of technology, but I am always amazed at the sheer ingenuity that went into machines such a long time ago already. The engines are huge, and there are some spare parts that can be viewed – a single piston is as large as a leg of mine…

Of course, there is always something I take out of a museum. In this case it is the following: Operating a steam engine for a single kilometre requires 100 litres of water and 40 kilograms of coal, copious reserves of both of which are stored in the tender behind the locomotive. Older models get the coal into the furnace by an auger, a spiral conveyor (this is still used in larger ovens for wood chips), but in the early years, this had to be done by hand. This shoveling is obviously a very precise operation – there were specific shovel training devices for goal training… A pity we could not try that one out…

Anyway, we all had a great day in the museum which we concluded with Korean food before my friends went back to Kobe. I also received two large stacks of books as present – and reading them has essentially been everything that I did for the rest of the weekend…

Differences

This is only my second July in Kyoto – and already lots of things have changed since my first time…

The weather is not so nice as last year. It is less sunny, so far we had overcast weather practically daily for a couple of weeks already, and it does also rain much more than last year at this time, although still not enough to call it a proper rainy season. I think the relative lack of rain is the reason why I am not yet seriously depressed right now, I really don’t like it that grey day in day out… At least the temperatures are up where they should be, in their low thirties during the day and in their twenties during the night – which means you can still sleep. That’s certainly a bonus; also it does not feel quite as humid this year. I hope the weather will stay like this – if only with respect to the humidity…

The other big change since last year is regarding to Gion Matsuri. I have written extensively about it last year, it is probably the largest and certainly the most famous of the festivals in Japan. This year the proceedings have been renewed, or rather, re-traditionalised, as now there will be two parades of floats instead of only a single one. From this year on, we will have the so-called Saki Matsuri with the first and bigger (23 floats) Yama Hoko Grand Parade on July 17th, and the preceding yoi-yama party evening on the 16th. And then, there will be the Ato Matsuri with the second and smaller (10 floats) Yama Hoko Grand Parade on July 24th, combined with the Hanagasa Flower Hat Procession (which also took place last year on the same day). The other events surrounding the two parades will take place as the year before.

Apparently, this way of having two parades – one before (saki) and one after (ato) the Gion shrine deities have been moved to their temporary resting place in the Otabisho – was the original form of Gion Matsuri that has been practised until 1965, when it was abandoned because of increased road traffic and the disturbances it would cause to have two parades that effectively close off the inner city. Obviously, it is unlikely that car traffic has severely decreased in the last 48 years, but these days, there are other priorities, and this one is called: tourism. People who made the decision to return to the traditional two-parade Gion matsuri are hoping that there will be more people coming, or that at least they will be a bit more spread out this time.

Personally, I don’t mind either way, and I will probably go and see both parades anyway. I just hope that the yoi-yama evening on July 16th, when the inner city is closed and turned into a pedestrian zone, will have an atmosphere just as festive and relaxed as last year. Let’s hope it will not rain!