Kongourinji (trip two) and Saimyouji

Some of you may recall my trip to Kongourinji (Buddhist temple) back in the beginning of October. It’s the temple with one thousand statues of Ojizou-sama (a god of children). My weekend host parents took me. Last Wednesday, a field trip for my Buddhism class took me to both Saimyouji and Kongourinji. Because I’ve already made a pretty in-depth post about Kongourinji, I’m just going to throw in a couple of pictures of the fall colors at the temple gardens before moving on to Saimyouji.

If you look carefully in the second picture, you might be able to make out the tiny waterfall that the trees are coming together in front of.

Kongourinji was actually the second stop on our trip. First, we went to Saimyouji. There are three large temples in the mountains near Hikone that are all designated as national treasures. Between my host parents taking me around and this trip, I’ve had the good fortune to see all three. It’s hard to name a favorite, but I lean towards Saimyouji. This might just be because of the time of year (and beautiful colors) though.

I am especially fond of the lichen that thrive in the mountains.

Note the way the stones in the above picture are laid in order to make a flat surface. Most of the old temples I’ve been to have beautiful stone pathways leading up to the temple with these flat areas to the side. The truth is, each of these areas used to have a temple on top of it. A lot of things get knocked/burned down with time though.

Anyway, here’s a picture of the main gates leading up to the temple area:

On the right side of the picture, you might be able to see a rope tied around a tree. Here’s a better shot of it:

As you can see, the rope is actually tied around two trees that have grown together. My teacher explained that they’re considered “wife and husband” trees.

Next, here’s a shot of the first floor of the pagoda at Saimyouji:

This was the first pagoda I actually went into. Though it was three stories, I was surprised to find out that the top two are only for show; there are no stairs leading up. There was a golden statue of the Buddha inside and super old paintings on the walls and ceiling, worn with time. There was a dragon on one wall. Paintings of Bodhisattva covered the four pillars inside. It was hard to make out a lot of them, but it was pretty cool.

This is a bit off-topic, but I found out a while ago that dragons are symbols of water in Buddhism (at least in Japan, if nowhere else). There are sometimes dragon fountains at Buddhist temples, and I found out that they’re sometimes painted places to ward off fires. Haku, a dragon character in Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away, is a river spirit, but I hadn’t realized that the meaning of his character extended so far. It’s interesting to me that dragons scream fire in Western culture but symbolize water in the East.

After the pagoda, I went to the actual temple.

It was a pretty interesting trip, and I’m happy I had the opportunity to go. More than anything, I think I enjoyed looking at the moss and the fall colors. I don’t really know what that says about me, but I’ve been to enough temples now that I know what else to expect. Here’s one last shot of the trees changing:

You can see the rest of my photos from this trip here.

It’s officially December here now, but the temperature highs are still averaging around 50 F. I actually rode my bike to Buddhism class without a coat today. I found some purple flowers blooming near Lake Biwa yesterday, and I still see huge chrysanthemums on display.

I have less than three weeks left to enjoy Japan, so I’ve resolved to make the best of it. I’m planning a trip to Osaka this Saturday, and I’m hoping to make it to either Nagoya or Himeji as well. I also need to make a trip up to Hikone Castle, which I’ve lived down the street from for three months and still haven’t actually visited. It’s easy to put something off when there doesn’t seem to be any hurry, it seems.

Kyoto #3 – Kinkaku-ji and Arashiyama

I took a third trip to Kyoto back on the 6th. Though it involved a lot of getting lost, it was still a great experience. My friends and I went to see Kinkaku-ji (lit. Gold-Leaf Temple, but known more widely in the English-speaking world as the Golden Pavilion).

It was breath-taking, as you can tell.

After Kinkaku-ji we… got pretty lost. Our journey to Arashiyama, famed for its bamboo forests, took much longer than expected. We boarded the wrong bus, then gave up on the bus system entirely, opting instead for a nearby subway station. We took that to a stop that put off near a train station, and then took a train to Arashiyama. From that train stop, it took up about15 minutes by foot to reach the bamboo pathway leading into Arashiyama. I had my second run-in with geisha there. (Yes, there are still geisha in Japan.)

Soon after our geisha sighting (which makes them sound like aliens, but it’s really not all that often that you see them, and even the Japanese people make a big deal out of it, running around to snap photos), we went to a shrine in Arashiyama. Near the shrine, we found a tiny little house made of sticks. There were a bunch of 1-yen coins (which most of us Americans term “yennies”) in front of it.

Not sure what the meaning of the little house was (or if there was any at all), but I’d guess it has some Shinto significance considering the fact that it was so close to a shrine.

We were pretty worn out after running around the bamboo pathway, so we decided to call it a day and head home. I wish we could’ve gone to the monkey park in Arashiyama, but I saw enough to be content… including a second shrine in Arashiyama at which cats seemed to play some significance.

Note the glowing yellow eyes inside of the shrine.

My roommate was gracious enough to share all of her photos from the day with me. My camera broke the night before, and though I managed to fix it afterward, I was camera-less for the day. You can see the rest of the photos from Kinkaku-ji and Arashiyama here.

Culture Day Parade

It’s been a long time since I last updated, and as a consequence, I’ll be making a string of updates within the next few days to try to catch up.

Culture Day is a holiday celebrated in Japan. It was on November 3rd, though I’m not sure whether it’s always on the 3rd or not. My friends and I went down to the castle to see a parade. There were a ton of marching bands, and people were dressed up in all kinds of period costumes.

You can see my photo album of the day here.

After the parade, some guys did tricks on ladders. There’s a video of it in my photo album. My friends and I walked around, bought some food (yakisoba, omusoba, takoyaki, taiyaki, and candied apples) and went home shortly after.

For the curious:

yakisoba – fried buckwheat noodles with vegetables (some ginger, carrots, etc.)
omusoba – short for “omelet soba”, it’s basically yakisoba with an egg around it and sauce and mayo on top
takoyaki – fried pancake-ish balls with octopus inside
taiyaki – batter fried in the shape of a fish; contain various fillings (custard, chocolate, red beans, etc.)

Oh! There was one part of the day that really surprised me. On the way to the castle, there was a table set up where they were handing out free sake. They do not ID in Japan… so we just walked up to the table and took some. (It should be noted that I am of legal age anyway.) It was one of those, “Whoa, I am definitely not in America,” moments.

weird things I have said in Japanese

For your amusement.

Today I told my sensei that one of my favorite teachers from high school lived on an alpaca farm. Unfortunately, the word I chose for “farm” implied that alpacas are vegetables.

—

We had to make up dialogues based on prompts we were given in class today. I was paired with another girl to do the, “I’m sorry that I missed our date,” dialogue. It went like this:

Me:  I’m sorry that I forgot about our date!
Her:  It’s fine. How about we go on a date next week?
Me:  Actually, I have a date with my other girlfriend next week.
Her:  Are you serious!?

For those of you who know Japanese, I used “ore” instead of “watashi”.

—

We also had a dialogue where you apologize to your teacher for missing class. I was paired with another girl in this dialogue.

Her:  I’m sorry I didn’t come to class, teacher.
Me:  Why didn’t you come?
Her:  I couldn’t find my pants.
Me:  I see. Please buy more pants.

—

I constantly tell people that I did something next week. I get the words for “next” and “last” mixed up all the time.

—

One day last week, my teacher asked me what was in my refrigerator. Instead of saying, “Milk,” I told her that I had a cow in my fridge. A milkable one, at that.

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I once told my teacher that I had two people of buckwheat noodles. What I meant was grandmothers.

—

I am sure I have said things that are ten times more ridiculous than anything in this post, but I can’t remember at the moment. I’ll update with more sometime in the near future.

Kyoto Trip 2: Hongan-ji, Kyoto Tower, and the Police Box

This last Saturday (10-23-10), I had a Buddhism field trip to attend in Kyoto. We went to Nishi (West) Hongan-ji (temple).

Outside Hongan-ji.

Hongan-ji is an enormous temple. It’s really beautiful outside and in, though my camera was, once again, pretty useless in capturing the inside. You’ll see some blurry pictures of lamps, doors, and an alter to Shinran, the founder of Pure Land Buddhism, when I link to the rest of my album.

Unsurprisingly, Hongan-ji had a really beautiful garden. I think the gardens are one of my favorite things about temples.

Another beautiful thing about Hongan-ji was the China Gate outside of it.

Here’s some detail:

After the field trip ended, I decided to hang out with my roommate and another friend. We ate in Kyoto Station, which had something like 10 floors and a ton to do. I had a fried pork loin in a soup with sweetened eggs, rice, miso soup (which had tiny mussels/clams at the bottom of it that you aren’t supposed to eat), pickled vegetables, and a cabbage-based salad. You think you get a lot of food when you eat out in America, but Japanese meals are sometimes even larger.

After lunch, the three of us decided to go see Kyoto Tower. You’re immediately confronted by it when you leave Kyoto Station through the central gates.

Here’s a picture from up in the tower:

You can view the rest of my photos from this trip here.

After the tower, we decided to track down a purikura (print club) machine in order to commemorate our day. For those of you that don’t remember, you get into a booth and have your picture taken in various poses. Afterwards, you draw on the pictures on a digital screen, and then they print out as stickers.

Unfortunately, going to do purikura turned into a pretty bad experience; while we were in the machine, someone stole my friend’s wallet. The sad thing is, the wallet was actually right in front of us. There’s a shelf inside of purikura machines to set your things. My friend set her purse down there, put coins into the machine, and then set her wallet on top of her purse. While we were having our picture taken, the curtain of the booth opened briefly. Both my friend and I noticed a hand, but we both assumed it was just someone checking to see whether anyone was using the machine at the time. The idea that it might’ve been a thief actually did cross my mind; I looked at the shelf where my friend’s belongings had been, and seeing that her purse was still there, I assumed that nothing had been taken. I hadn’t known at the time that her wallet had been on top of her purse instead of inside of it.

After we finished up with our purikura, my friend started rooting around inside of her purse in order to find her wallet. That’s when the realization struck, and we both figured out what had happened. She lost a lot:  cash, credit cards, her train ticket home, school IDs, her foreigner registration card, her driver’s license, and even her passport. It was really horrible.

We asked where the nearest police box was at the information desk and headed off to it in order to report what had happened. Big cities in Japan have a “police box” in almost every neighborhood. It’s a tiny building manned by about two cops. One of the policemen at the police box we went to could speak a bit of English, and between his English and our Japanese, we were able to convey what happened. After he went with us to the scene, we went back to the police box and spent three hours filling out paperwork. This had to do with the fact that we had to verbally convey what had happened in broken Japanese, and then he had to try to properly transpose it onto the forms. He was very nice, though we received a firm Japanese-style talking-to at the end. He said something like, “It makes your father sad when these things happen,” in Japanese.

It was a pretty bad experience (especially for my friend) to have to go through, but it was also pretty interesting. I’ve never had to deal with the police in America, and now I (kind of) know how to file a police report in Japanese.

Nara, Todai-ji, and Kasuga Shrine

I’m currently about a week behind in my updates, but I’m hoping to catch up on them soon. Even though I had quite an adventure in Kyoto yesterday, I’m going to talk about my trip to Nara last Friday (10-15-10) for now.

Nara is about an hour and a half train ride from Hikone station, assuming you get on the express. (Unfortunately, it’s a two and a half hour train ride if you end up stuck on the local trains, which was a reality I had to face on my way back.) Nara is famous for a lot of things, including Todai-ji, a temple with the world’s largest statue of Buddha, and deer, which roam around parts of the city. My roommate (who had already been to Nara) went with me.

First, here’s a view of Nara from right out of the station:

It was around noon when we arrived so we decided to get lunch before we did any exploring. We ended up eating at an Indian restaurant, which was kind of interesting. It was actually run by Indians, but the food was definitely catered toward a Japanese audience. My curry was tasty, but the yogurt drink they served me… Well. I have an automatic gag reflex when it comes to yogurt. I really don’t understand how anyone can eat it, let alone drink it, but it seems to be the thing in Japan.

It was a bit of a hike from the station area up to Nara Park, where the deer (as well as Todai-ji) are located. There was a lot to look at on the way though, including a beautiful pond full of turtles and koi fish. Once we got up into the park area, there were a lot of beautiful old buildings, including this pagoda:

Japanese deer are smaller than their American cousins. These ones were incredibly tame. You can pet them (though they don’t much seem to care for it unless you have a cookie to offer them.

Cookies that you can feed the deer are for sale all over the park for 250 yen a pack (about $2.75). I ended up trying to feed the deer several times. My first two attempts were admittedly a little bit scary; the deer swarm you when you have the cookies, and one actually jumped on me when I didn’t open the packet quickly enough. My third and fourth attempts were much more successful, though two of the deer decided to stand up on their hind legs to fight it out for one cookie I dropped during my fourth attempt…

In case you’re curious, I do have video footage of my first two attempts. The footage for my third attempt won’t upload for some reason, which is pretty unfortunate since I look like less of an idiot in it. Oh well.

Here’s my first attempt, and here’s my second.

After my first two deer-feeding attempts, we went on to Todai-ji, a large Buddhist temple. They were setting up for some kind of concert when we went, so there were huge banners on the temple that wouldn’t have normally been there. Here’s a view from outside:

Todai-ji is actually home to the largest statue of a Buddha in existence, I believe. Unfortunately, my camera is horrible, so I couldn’t get any decent pictures inside. When I link the rest of my Nara pictures, you’ll be able to look at a couple that my roommate took. Suffice it to say that it was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen. I saved my ticket, which has some of the Buddha’s dimensions listed.

Height of Body: 14.98m / 48.91 ft.
Length of Head:  5.41m / 17.75 ft.
Length of Eye:  1.02m / 3.34 ft.
Length of Ear:  2.54m / 8.33 ft.

There were also a ton of other huge statues inside, which my camera also failed me on getting decent photos of. The Buddha sits between two huge golden statues. As I’ve said, it was incredibly impressive.

After Todai-ji, we putzed around Nara and eventually ended up at Kasuga Shrine. We didn’t do anything there that I feel like talking about in-depth, so here are some picture instead:

Walking up to the entryway.

Washing my hands before entering the shrine. (You can spot this area in the picture just before this; it’s on the bottom left of the stairs.)

Lamps at Kasuga Shrine.

I think that about covers my trip to Nara. If you’d like to view the rest of my photos, you can check them out here. I’m hoping to find the time to update about yesterday’s trip to Kyoto sometime during the week, but I’ll see how things go. Life is kind of busy now. I meet with my Japanese teacher and conversation partner on Mondays, internship at a local elementary school on Tuesdays, bike half an hour to my three-hour Buddhism class on Wednesdays (and then bike half an hour home), and I generally travel on Fridays and/or Saturdays. I think the traveling is my favorite part of the week even though it can be kind of exhausting. I feel a lot more adventurous now than I did two months ago. :)

weekend home stay, Hyakudaiji, Kongourinji, and kaiten-zushi

This update is long overdue, but because I have another entry about Nara that I’m itching to write, I’m going to try to make it brief.

Two weekends back, I did a three-day, two-night homestay with the Tanaka family. My host mother and father were in their sixties, and their 6-year-old granddaughter, Shiraho, who lives with them, was there for the first day. (She went on a trip to Okinawa Saturday morning, from what I understand.) My host parents were extremely nice. My host father was a Buddhist, and there was a Butsudan, or small Buddhist shrine, in the house. My host mother fed me incredibly large amounts of delicious food all weekend, and took me out with her friends on Saturday.

The house I stayed in was mostly Japanese-style with sliding doors and tables close to the ground. I sat on the floor most of the time I was there, and slept on a futon in a tatami room. The only really non-Japanese thing I came across was the bathroom (or toilet-room, to be more accurate; Japanese houses generally have two separate rooms for the bath and the toilet). Rather than a Japanese-style toilet, my family had an extremely advanced Western-style toilet. It actually opened to greet you when you walked into the room, and had a number of button-functions that I didn’t bother trying to figure out.

Here are some pictures of the futon I slept on:

On Sunday, my host parents took me to two Buddhist temples. The first, called Hyakudaiji, allowed pictures to be taken inside. There was this set of statues inside:

There were some awesome gold statues past the wood netting you can see behind these guys, but my camera just isn’t good enough to take pictures of things in dim lighting. There was also a really beautiful garden though, where I walked on stones over water and fed koi. Here’s a picture:

The rest of my photos from Hyakudaiji can be found here.

The second Buddhist temple, Kongourinji, was amazing. It contained a thousand statues of Ojizou-sama, a god of children. Here are a couple of examples:

This ojizou-sama, like most of the others, was a little over a foot high. They all wore bibs.

This Ojizou-sama, however, was different. My host mother explained that he’s the Ojizou-sama of stillborn and miscarried children. He protects them in the afterlife from demons and such. She showed me a comic and the story is really sad, as one would expect.

The rest of my photos from Kongourinji can be found here.

The last thing I’ll wrap this post up with is a description of kaiten-zushi, or “conveyor-belt sushi”, which my host parents took me to for lunch on Sunday. The basic concept is:  You sit at a table of at a counter, and plates of various kinds of sushi go by on a conveyor belt. You choose the ones you want and eat up!

I was honestly pretty surprised by kaiten-zushi despite it being referenced in an N64 Pokemon game in which your Lickitung has to be the one to eat the most. It was really amusing. And delicious.

sick in Japan, take 2

After my last post, I ended up developing some new symptoms, so on Tuesday, I went to see an ear, nose, and throat specialist. The Japanese medical system is interesting in that it relies on patients usually referring themselves to specialists. Clinics only provide 2-3 days worth of medicine, and they also sometimes refer you out, but if you want to save money, it’s best to just go to the correct doctor on your own.

The ear, nose, and throat doctor was… interesting. Nothing seemed different until I was called back into the actual office, which, as it turns out, is the only office in the whole building. It was one huge area, which included the doctor’s desk. The patient’s chair was large and had a bunch of lights around it, and the display of metal instruments to the left was… off-putting, to say the least. The doctor wore a long white coat, a facial mask, and had one of those big, circular doo-hickeys that reflect light attached to his forehead. I had never actually seen a doctor wear one outside of cartoons before.

Despite my hesitance because of the look of the office, I was treated with care and am happy to report that I have no horror stories to share. I told them that I thought I had a sinus infection, but they wanted to do an ultrasound of my face to confirm. The ultrasound was definitely a new experience. The results were apparently inconclusive though, so they also had to do an x-ray of my face. They asked me to remove my glasses and noticed, at the last minute, that I have a nose ring, so I had to take that out too. I’d forgotten about it. ^^;

The x-ray results confirmed that I had a sinus infection, so I was prescribed an antibiotic, my wallet was left looking rather pitiful, and I went home.

Hooowever.

Though my sinuses were clearing up, I’d started to develop a tightness/rattle in my lungs. This was not terribly surprising for me as I have asthma and often end up with bronchitis, but I hoped it would go away. Instead, it got worse on Friday and I developed a pretty bad cough. When I woke up this morning, I knew it wasn’t going away on its own, so it was time to take a trip back to the doctor.

Clinics are generally closed on weekends in Japan. Today I got to experience my first trip to the actual hospital. It was big, older building, and despite some anxiety on my part, everything went fine. I saw a doctor who confirmed that I have bronchitis. She sent me for a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia. The results were negative, so she prescribed me a steroid and another medicine that will help lower the viscosity of the gross crap rattling around in my lungs. The JCMU resident coordinator ended up paying for my hospital fees because my wallet was looking pretty pathetic and I need money to buy food, but I’ll pay it back after I can get to the ATM. (Foreigners with American cards have to use ATMs at 7-11 or the post office. The post office is a 15-minute bike ride, which I have not been able to make all week. I don’t want to put any unnecessary stress on my body.)

So! I am sick. It is not terribly fun, but I have a three-day weekend, so my plan is to chill out. I have medicine to treat what I have, and I have no horror stories to share in regards to the medical system here.

Oh! One last thing though. I wish I had had my camera with me at the hospital because there was the most ridiculous sign on the wall. The anime character Black-Jack was holding a beaker, and underneath him, it said, “STOP!AIDS”

Aids is definitely not a laughing manner, but it was a really poorly done sign. I felt like it was yelling at me to stop and then calling me “aids”. Oh, Japan…

Japanese clinics

Over the weekend I did a homestay. I’ll update in detail about that later, but for now, I’m going to talk about getting sick in Japan.

I developed a sore throat yesterday afternoon. It got worse over night and my temperature was a bit above normal, so I got in contact with the office to cancel my internship today (I was supposed to meet with my supervisor). The resident coordinator (for lack of a better term) was informed that I was sick, so she called me this morning and offered to take me to a clinic.

Japanese clinics (or the one I went to, at least) are really nice.

The clinic was clean, the people were friendly, and I got in to see a doctor in about half an hour. The resident coordinator is Japanese and speaks English fluently, so she helped me convey my symptoms to the doctor. (Though I did use some elementary Japanese like, “My stomach is okay,” and “No, it doesn’t hurt.”) You would be hard-pressed to get by at the clinic without a translator unless your Japanese is fairly good (I’ve studied for three years and understood most of his questions, but was still at a loss from time to time and needed help translating my answers). Japanese doctors don’t generally speak English. If you decide to study abroad through a decent program though, they should have someone to go with you.

Anyway, I was diagnosed with a cold (Japanese colds are different — and worse — than American colds, fyi) and given some medicine. I paid about $40 for the meds, but I’ll be reimbursed after I fill out some claim forms for my overseas insurance. One medicine I have to take twice a day for three days, and the other is five doses of medicine to take up to twice a day if my throat hurts very badly or if my fever gets above 38 Celcius. Unfortunately, it spiked suddenly about an hour ago, so I’ve already had to take it. Hopefully I’ll feel well enough to go to class tomorrow (and to bike to my first Buddhism class on Wednesday). If I get any worse, I’ll go see my resident coordinator about it again.

I believe Japan has socialized medicine, though I don’t know many of the details. I’m planning to research it soon out of curiosity. I’m fairly certain they don’t do “primary care” physicians here, which is one drawback, but I’ll be sure to look into it.

the wonderland of the child

Found at the local grocery/super store. Click to enlarge. In case you can’t read the fine print, the shirt says:

“the wonderland
of the child
who is not
familiar
with an adult!!
lie and truth are unbalance
the opposite of truth which is unbalance”