goinggaijin.com – Page 110 – A European's move towards Japan

Expectations

Last week Thursday, a friend of mine from Tokyo came down for a spontaneous visit. She wanted to see two things – and me – and came laden with great expectations with respect to both.

In the morning, we went to Daigo-ji, a large temple complex in the south-east of Kyoto. I had been in the area before, and didn’t like it much, so I was surprised to find one of the main temples of the Buddhist Shingon sect there. The compound is very large, we visited only the lower part on the foot of the mountain, there is an upper part on the top as well, but it would have taken us two more hours than we were willing to invest. In any case, my friend was mainly interested in the five-story pagoda located on the temple grounds, built in 952 and one of Japan’s National Treasures, which had been featured in a TV program just a few days prior to her visit. The pagoda was nice indeed, situated close to the mountain surrounded by many trees. Interestingly, there were many young monks walking around and praying in front of the numerous temple buildings; they have to do this each day for a whole year, probably as part of their training.

We also went to another part of the temple, called Sanboin. This compound comprises the old living quarters of the abbot, and the buildings indeed have a stately feel to them with their large rooms and delicately painted shoji. However, the most exciting part of Sanboin is the main garden. Although typically Japanese, meaning a lake, mossy stones, and pine trees, it is absolutely stunning, perfectly laid out, the most beautiful Japanese garden I have yet seen! And it is not even the high season for garden watching (hanami and koyo, remember). Unfortunately, it is not allowed to take photos in there (and there are even guards to watch your every move), so I cannot share my impressions, but if you are ever there, it is certainly worth the 600 YEN entrance fee.

After lunch, we went to the Balthus exhibition in the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. My friend wanted to see it because she just recently read about him by chance, and as the book sang his praises, she wanted to check him out for herself. To be honest, we both were not overly thrilled by the exhibition. We found a few pictures nice, but there was only one painting we really liked. At the end of the exhibition was an extra room with large photographs of the artist in his Swiss home and atelier, and some of his personal belongings. Interestingly, there were photos of him wearing Kimono and Hakama – his second wife was Japanese…

In the end, my friend’s expectations were not met – or at least, not as she had expected. The things she came for had been nice, but it were the others, the unexpected ones, that she found more exciting. This has happened to me before as well, and probably to lots of other people. Conclusion: Maybe it’s better when looking for new experiences to leave all expectations behind…

Documentation

Yesterday I spent the afternoon in my favourite spot at Shinniyodo temple. There are lots of trees, often a cool breeze, and benches and tables where I can write and work. Unless they are working in the large area with attached cemetery with their leaf blowers and grass cutters, the place is very quiet and peaceful. As it is a bit off the beaten tracks, not many people are coming there, except during Hanami and Koyo season.

Every now and then, a hapless tourist stumbles onto the temple ground. Yesterday was such a day, and I watched a tourist – possibly a Japanese from outside of Kyoto – running around the temple taking photos. The man also took a picture of the front of the main hall, which struck me as particularly odd. Don’t get me wrong, the buildings are nice, there is a lovely three-storied pagoda, and for a special fee you can go and see the Japanese garden, but, right now, the main hall front view is this:

So, why on earth would you want to take a picture of scaffolding with a roof on top? Even if the man was a builder, this is very strange. It may have been simply for documentation purposes, something along the lines of Been here, Done that. I have seen many people taking odd snapshots. The most stunning experience, however, was a man in Heian shrine garden, who walked through it with his ipad raised to the side of his head, obviously making a movie. However, neither did he look at the screen, nor at the scenery at large, the only thing he saw was the path in front of him. To me, this type of tour documentation is useless. Even if you see the pictures half a year later – would you still remember actually having been there?

Timing

This is a great day with great timing… Noon has just passed and I’m already 2 hours late…

In the morning, I had one of my quarterly hospital appointments. When I arrived there, I was informed by a note on my doctor’s door (which I got translated by another staff member) that my doctor was running late and would not be in the office until 10:30, more than one hour after my original appointment.

Usually that’s not a big deal, because my schedule is rather loose, but just today it happens that I have a deadline, need to finish two other things (including writing this post), and I have to go shopping for some souvenirs because I will see friends in Kobe this afternoon. As we want to go to a museum which will close at 5 pm and have dinner afterwards, I can’t be much later than already planned.

At least I could do a little something while waiting for the doctor’s arrival – as you get this cell-phone style beeper, you don’t need to sit and wait before the office anyway, which was good – in the one hour I had I went shopping and picked up my writing utensils from home, which is only 10 minutes away thank goodness.

Still, when my appointment was finally over, one and a half hour later than planned, I just made it in time for the extra long queue in front of the payment counter; and when this was done, there was, of course, an extra long queue in the pharmacy as well (you have to pick up your medicines in “your” pharmacy not later than 2 days after the prescription, so that could not wait). So, altogether, I am now running two hours late. I’ll have to get on the bus in about one hour – and I have the feeling I haven’t done anything just yet…

Isn’t is always the same – just when you think everything is running just fine, you have a severe onset of Murphy’s Law…

Plasticbottles

I have finally solved one of those mysteries that I have been wondering about since I came to Japan and started living in this neighborhood. With that I mean, this type of small, suburban, family homes kind of neighborhood in general, not just this particular one in Kyoto, as I have come across the same mystery in several other places as well.

Let’s try a little quiz (and don’t scroll down to the solution just yet!).
What do you think is the purpose of these: So, what do you think the bottles – which are filled with water, by the way – are good for?

For a long time I thought they were used in case of a fire (and one of my housemates had a similar suspicion); it’s always good to have plenty of water around when one of the wooden houses is burning, and those plastic bottles, why, you can just chuck them in without further ado.

Then I thought, well, maybe, it could be that it’s a sign not to park there, whether a bicycle or a motor bike or even a car. Although this does not seem very useful, the close-knit way small neighborhoods work here with people on constant lookout for anybody breaking any rules, it could just work.

But no, that’s not it, and now that I have inquired with several people as to the meaning of all those bottles all over the place, and they all gave me the same answer, irrespective of location, I thought I’d share it with you: Those bottles are there…

…to prevent cats from coming to the houses.

Yes, I made the same sceptical face as you do now. The reasoning behind the whole idea seems to be that the water reflects light, and as cats do not like those type of flashy reflections, they will simply go away and take their business elsewhere. I have no idea whether this is supposed to work at night as well though, the neighborhood is not that brightly lit (thank goodness). I know that at the edge of roads that go through forests in Europe, people put up old CD’s, in the hope that the reflections from the car’s headlights at night will keep the forest animals from coming near or even crossing the road; and it appears to work. But, those a wild animals – here we’re talking about cats that are used to humans and their lights…

I obviously need a new category for my posts: All things Japanese – wacky stuff…

Catching up

I’m back from spending a week with an old friend of mine and her family, and I’ve enjoyed myself greatly.

Tuesday I went up to Nagoya, and after saying a short hello to her mother, we went to see Atsuta shrine, the biggest shrine in Nagoya. The area the shrine covers is very large, and it struck me immediately that the precincts were well kept and had many new buildings. It turned out that this shrine houses one of the three sacred treasures of the emperor: the sword. Thus, it is a shrine dedicated to the sun goddess, and is considered very important. In the evening we had dinner at my friend’s brother’s place. I had met him before, but he has only recently moved back to Nagoya. Once again, he was cooking lovely food, and we had a great evening.

Wednesday we spent in Arimatsu, one of the neighborhoods in Nagoya. Although only a small place, it is known as a part of the historical Tokaido – the road between Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto. A small part of it has been restored, there are lots of beautiful old houses to be seen there. Arimatsu is also famous for shibori, a beautiful tie-dying craft that apparently goes back to the 8th century.

Takayama was our next station, and we spent Wednesday night and Thursday there. It is a rather small town in the middle of the mountains, and its surroundings remind me a lot of the place I come from in Austria. There is the Hida Folk Village a bit outside of the town, an open air museum that has a number of traditional farmhouses from all over Gifu prefecture. All the houses can be visited, and as it was comparatively cool on Thursday, there was a fire in each one of them. There are many other sights in Takayama, and we spent a lot of time walking through the inner city with its old wooden houses and breweries.

Friday and Saturday we spent in Kyoto. My friend wanted to see a few specific things, and so we went to the Western part of town, which I have grossly neglected so far, I have to confess. We went to Ryoanji temple with the famous zen garden, and to Ninnaji, which is less than a temple and more of an old emperor’s residence. We also saw the Myoshin temple complex, a huge accumulation of temples next to each other; Ryoanji is considered one of the outlying temples of Myoshin. Saturday we spent on my side of town, starting out on the philosopher’s path and then moving on to the city to do some shopping.

I had a great week and thanks to my friend I could revisit parts of Japan I loved very much, like Takayama, but could also see new things in Nagoya and Kyoto. It’s so much more fun to go with somebody else than to do everything on your own all the time. I hope her brother will visit me soon, as promised…

Jizo-Bon

Yesterday, I was woken up by the neighbours just before 8 am. They were already up and about on the little street down the steps from our house and chatting and laughing and doing something. Children were also already up and running about – what ever happened to sleeping in in the weekends? There was something going on all day, and in the early afternoon, the party culminated in a little ceremony at the Jizo shrine at the bottom of the steps… This I found worthy of investigation, and, lo and behold, last weekend was Jizo-Bon, the Jizo festival.

These are the Jizo statues in our Jizo shrine at the bottom of the steps:

Jizo is a Buddhist saint, a Bodhisattva (Japanese: Bosatsu), that means, he has attained enlightenment, but will stay on Earth to save other souls. O-Jizo sama is chiefly the guardian of children, dead or alive, but he also takes care of travellers and firefighters. Thus, he is probably the most popular saint in Japan and his statues can be found everywhere. Often he is depicted as a simple Buddhist monk walking with a staff, and the statues are clothed in little red or white hats or bibs. The idea behind that is that, as Jizo will take care of dead children, he will protect them from harm and cold – and pass on the clothing.

Jizo-Bon is the yearly festival for this saint, and it happens on August 24th (and sometimes also on August 23rd). Traditionally, it has been a day to confess bad deeds to the Jizo and asking for their forgiveness, and probably many people still do that. Nowadays, it is often combined with a children’s festival, Jizo-sai, where the neighborhood children are allowed to do little things like changing the clothing of the Jizo statues or painting their faces, and eat red-coloured food. From the sound of it, it seems that the kids had lots of fun last Sunday!

Note: I will visit a friend in Nagoya for the rest of the week, so my next post will be in September!

Average

There have been heavy rains in several Japanese provinces, causing floodings and landslides. I have just read that in a large landslide in Hiroshima, at least 40 people were killed, and more than 50 are still unaccounted for.

In case you were reading these accounts: Kyoto has been fine so far. As I said last week, just up until the Daimonji, there were heavy rains. Apparently during the ceremony, people were not allowed to go down to the riverbank (which is a favourite spot for watching the big dai) because the river had partially overflown the banks of the Kamogawa and the current was indeed very strong. Besides that, I did not notice much effects of the bad weather in Kyoto. Here, it has been dry the whole week, and although there are still weather warnings in place, they are now in the North of Honshu and the South of Hokkaido, far from Kyoto.

So, don’t worry about me here in Kyoto – the summer has average temperatures and average precipitation here. Must be all the mountains that surround the city…

Ears and Noses

The other day, when browsing Wikipedia, I came across a description of a place in Kyoto that I found most intriguing. It sounded so odd and interesting that I decided I needed to see it myself. This is it:

It is called the mimizuka, the Ear Mound – although at the time it was erected in 1597 it was called the hanazuka, the Mound of Noses. It is what the original name suggests: a tomb for noses, and the story behind it is rather… gruesome.

From 1592 through 1597, Hideyoshi TOYOTOMI – who, by the way, is enshrined in the Toyokuni shrine literally across the street – led an invasion of the Korean peninsula, with the intent to conquer first Korea, and ultimately, China. Wars in the 16th century were obviously not the clean “push-button-here” affairs that we can watch on TV now, and there were thousands of casualties, both on the battlefields and among civilians. At this time, soldiers were paid per kill, and one way to prove that was by taking the heads of the dead. By the second Japanese invasion in 1597, the custom had changed to take the more easily transportable noses of the victims instead, which were properly collected, counted, and then shipped to Japan as proof of the army’s efficiency. More than 200.000 heads and noses were taken during this time.

Interestingly, by the end of the invasion (which was unsuccessful, by the way), the noses were interred with proper ceremony in the hanazuka, and Buddhist priests were set to pray for the souls of the victims of the war. Only several decades later it was decided that the name hanazuka was too offensive and changed to mimizuka, but personally I don’t quite see the difference here, as the kanji for “ear” is still used.

Nowadays, it seems that many Japanese do not know about the significance of the mimizuka (there are a few others in other parts of Japan) and what the monument contains. Koreans do come to visit it, however, and there are even efforts being made to get the remains returned to Korea. Once again something I find rather odd – it’s 400 years ago after all, it is a nice and well-cared for monument, and there still seem to be regular ceremonies held there. But then again, what do I know…

Daimonji 2014

Indeed, the Daimonji festival took place on Saturday evening, despite all the rain. A friend of mine told me that it was a religious ceremony, nothing geared towards tourists, so they would try to do it at the designated day no matter what.

It rained heavily on Saturday, with brief stops in between, and all day I was unsure whether the daimonji would take place. However, the rain stopped at around 6 pm, and when it got dark about an hour later, you could make out people – or rather, their flashlights – on Mt. Daimonji, where the largest and the first of the five fires is lit.

I went to a friend of mine who lives farther North in Kyoto and who had arranged to go to the roof of a three storey building in his neighborhood. From there, four of the five fires could be seen, although not all picture perfect: the hidari-dai or “left dai” fire could not be seen in its full glory, but only as a single thin strip of fires. Here are photos of the three fires – from right to left on the mountains, in order of their being lit – that are more or less recognisable: The dai on Mt. Daimonji, which simply means “big”; the two signs myo-ho, part of a Buddhist sutra; and my favourite one, the fune, the boat-shaped fire.Watching the fires being lit one after the other to guide home the ancestral spirits was once again a wonderful, touching experience. The whole display only took about half an hour, and then I walked home, meandering through town in the dry, cool evening.

There is only one of the daimonji fires I have not seen yet: the big torii gate on Arashiyama. Maybe I will try to go there next year.

Anticipation

Tomorrow is the day of the daimonji, the end of the Obon-festival, where on the mountains surrounding Kyoto five huge bonfires will be lit to guide home the spirits that were visiting the Earth during Obon.

A friend of mine has secured a place on the roof of a building from where you are able to see at least four of the bonfires, if not all five of them, and I was planning to go there tomorrow evening and write a post with pictures.

Unfortunately, it has started to rain, and tomorrow’s weather forecast talks about “rain that periodically stops”… Usually, the festivals in Kyoto take place regardless of the weather, but I am not very confident that there will be the daimonji tomorrow. If it rains too much it will be impossible to see the fires – provided they can be lit at all. As far as I could find out, only once the daimonji had to be postponed by one day, let’s hope the second time won’t be tomorrow.

I’ll post an update and pictures when the daimonji has taken place.