Midori

Kokedera, "Moss Temple," is the nickname for Saihoji, a small Zen temple in western Kyoto. As its nickname implies, it is famous for moss. It is so famous, in fact, that you have to apply weeks in advance to get in and pay the incredible amount of 3000 yen (~$30).

I had heard great things about this temple from friends and teachers. I had heard that not only do you get to tour the magnificent moss gardens, but you also get to copy sutras. In fact, I heard you were Required to copy sutras. Sounded like fun to me, so I went.

Disappointment #1: We didn't copy sutras. We did write our names and our "Negai goto" (thing we wish for) on a "gomaki" (a stick of wood for writing wishes and names on that will later be burned in a ceremony to release your wishes to the heavens where they can be answered), but I was really hoping for some sutra writing. At least we got to participate in sutra chanting.

Disappointment #2: The moss was a little dry. I guess I was expecting the sort of moss I had seen at Ginkakuji earlier in the year right after the rains. Plants that survive on humidity lose their luster during the dry summer, I know, but I was hoping for a little more green. Not that there was a lack of moss; according to the guide, there are over 150 different kinds of it in the garden.

Disappointment #3: It started to rain on our way into Matsuo Shrine, so we didn't get to wander around, and I didn't get time to try to remember the things I had read about it.

The day was not all disappointing, however. I got to go to a section of Kyoto I rarely see, and it had been awhile since I'd made a temple visit. It was a nice break from the studying.

Counting Down

In 15 days I will be in the United States.
In 15 days I will be eating pizza, steak, cheese, cake, cheesecake, Life cereal, oatmeal, hummus, honey roasted turkey lunchmeat, tacos, burritos, apples, granola bars, hamburgers, hotdogs, and so much more.
In 15 days I will begin a month and a half vacation encompassing friends, family, greyhound buses, Boston, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, an alma mater, professors, and driving on the right side of the road.
In 15 days I'll be marveling at the height and girth of Americans, the size of servings, the inconvenience of public transportation, the lack of chopsticks, and my inablity to say "Thank you" in English.
In 15 days I'll be on my way to see you. Tell me when's a good time, or I will be dropping in unexpectedly.

Welcome, welcome

I'm continuously surprised by my house. Or, rather, by the living creatures that visit my house.

Today, as I was watching the news, a weasel casually strutted across my back porch.

Now, I do not live in the countryside. The neighbor's house is a mere six inches from mine. So I believe I am justified in thinking that wildlife has no place on my street. However, here I am with geckos in my room and weasels on my porch.

I'm just waiting for the wild monkeys to come down the mountain to take up residence in my kitchen.

Holiday Weather

I guess it's the fact that the Japanese have lived on this island for a good couple of thousand years that makes them so incredibly accurate at predicting weather patterns. My koto teacher said to me the other day, "Once O-Bon is over the temperature will drop and the nights become cooler."

O-Bon was over three days ago. The day after O-Bon the temperature was three degrees cooler. Yesterday was six degrees cooler than last week. Last night I had to get up in the middle of the night to get a blanket.

I just don't understand how Japanese holidays control the weather.

From Fear to Food

When I was a child I dreaded swimming in an ocean or lake with seaweed. If there were slimy plants around that could potentially brush up against my leg, I wanted no part of it.

But there must be something about living in a country that values seaweed as a food product that has changed my perception.
I'm swimming in the ocean, and a large piece of seaweed floats by. I reach out and grab it.

"Wakame!"
"It looks so tasty."
"It's like we're in a giant bowl of miso soup."
"We should dry it out and take it back as a gift."
"If we're floating in miso soup, I'm the tofu: bright white!"
"Are you getting hungry?"

P.S. As I write this, I am munching on pieces of dried Korean seaweed. So delicious!

"My Boom"

The Japanese have lately come to love using the english word "my" as a fuzzy little adjective that really means something more like "personal or individual." You can buy a "My Car," or a "My House." At frisbee I'm often asked if I brought my "My Disc." But the most overused of this construction is "My Boom." What are you into lately?

Lately, "My Boom" is dancing. And so when my old host family took me to their little neighborhood festival and everyone was doing the O-Bon Odori (O-bon dance). I thought it would be fun to join in.

The tradition of an O-bon Odori goes way back to when the dances were performed as part of the sending away ceremony for the spirits visiting during O-bon. It has been passed down for hundreds of years and is still performed around O-bon by small neighborhoods, although without the context of a religious rite.

The dance is fairly simple. Everyone joins together in a circle and the dance proceeds counterclockwise around and around. The little old ladies taught me the steps and hand gestures using a little song that matches the action. I asked my host father whether the song had anything to do with the meaning of the dance, and this is what he explained.

"The words that describe the actions are actually describing a coal miner's work: Dig it up, dig it up. Throw the sack on your back. Wipe the sweat off your forehead. Push the cart. Sweep it clean." Neither he nor my host mother knew how that explanation came to be used.

Anyway, I learned the dance, and after three or four turns I was dragged up to the platform where everyone could watch the foreigner doing the traditional Japanese dance. My host family is convinced that a picture of me will be in the little neighborhood newspaper next week.

S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G

The Japanese language borrows quite a few words from foreign languages. However, you can't just walk up to someone and say a word and think they'll understand you. Chances are, they might know the word, but you aren't pronouncing it correctly. You must Japanize it. Here's an example from the bar I went to last night.

Barkeep (in japanese): What would you like to drink?
Me: I'll have a White Russian.
B: A what?
M: Wahito rahshian?
B: (blank look)
M: Wahitoh rashion? Wahito rishon? Rishian? Rushan?
B: Oh!! Wahitoh rushion!!

Sometimes I don't understand how a one syllable mistake can make me totally incomprehensable. Try, try again.

Not A Day Goes By

1. I went to the beach down in Kobe today. It was wonderful. The Japanese lifeguards, I mean "Surf Patrol," were wearing speedos and those little tri-colored hats with the whirl-gigs on top, only without the whirlygigs. There will be pictures later.

2. I got back to find a visitor waiting in my room. I gecko had come to visit. It does not bother me that there was a gecko in my room. It bothers me that he was able to get in here.

3. Leslie sent me a very sobering email. The world has lost one of it's greatest proponents for peace, especially peace among religions. Brother Roger, the founder of Taize, an ecumencial Christian community in rural France founded to promote dialogue and understanding, was stabbed to death while attending evening prayer service. Read about it here.

I have been to Taize twice and met with Brother Roger both times. I cannot express how how disturbing it is that this quiet old man who commanded such a presence and yet brought such a sense of peace could be murdered. I am just glad that his last moments were in the church he built surrounded by the people who loved him.

The Mountains Are On Fire

In the middle of August there is a nationwide unofficial national holiday week called O-bon. O-bon is an old Buddhist festival marking the one time a year when the spirits of the dead return to this world to check up on their relatives. The focal point of this tradition is the graves; families return to the countryside to meet up with relatives and visit family graves together. They clean the area, offer flowers and food, and pray for the souls of their ancesters and the safety of their families.

One of the major concerns of the living is that the spirits of the dead will get lost on their way too or from their resting place on this earth. There are many ways of guiding the spirits to your home, but the most important activity is the one to send them back to the other world. There are many festivals involving lanterns set adrift in rivers, lakes, or oceans.

One of the most memorable of the traditions in Kyoto is the "Go-zan Yamayaki," the "Burning of the Five Mountains." There are five mountains surrounding Kyoto onto which five characters have been traced out in fire pits. Once a year, on the 16th of August, the last day of O-bon, all five are lit simultaneously. The characters are:

Dai = big (east)
Hou = law
Myo = mystery, or skill
Fune = boat (not actually a character. it's a picture of a boat)
Dai = big (west)

I am lucky enough to live in a place where I could see four of the five at the same time. Unfortunately, the fifth one went out before I could get to a place to see it.

Dick and Jane Go A-Hunting

I remember reading picture books when I was little where the story involved kids trying to catch butterflies with nets. I think I even saw that sort of thing in old movies. But I can't remember one instance of me or anyone I know grabbing their butterfly net and a lunch pail and going butterfly hunting. Our hands were good enough for whatever insect we wanted to snag.

It seems to me, that when it comes to bug catching, Japanese children live in the Dick and Jane world of butterfly nets and bug cages. Wherever you go during summer vacation you are bound to see at least three kids prowling for insects, their nets at the ready.

Maybe the difference lies in the type of bugs they are catching. My favorites were always lightning bugs, rolly polly bugs, and caterpillars, but in Japan they're aiming for the big stuff: cicadas. I am told that cicadas do not annoy all parts of the United States with their buzzing/humming, but we had them in Indiana. They were elusive creatures, never seen, only heard. The only way you could tell they truly existed was by the shells of skin they left on the trees for you to find in the morning.

But in Japan, they are not only an ever-present hum outside your house, cicadas are also small torpedoes to be avoided when riding your bike, walking your dog, or merely checking your mailbox. And so, the children arm themselves with nets and strong cages, competing as to who can snag the most.

A child was telling his father in the park this morning, "I'm gonna get ten!!" And I could believe it, for in fifteen minutes he had already collected four.

If all else fails, I have a backup dream job

It has been almost one year since I began taking pottery classes. I feel like I learned enough to make a beautiful tea cup, a credible candle holder, and a passable plate. What I really enjoy molding, however, are small flower vases. Why? Maybe it's because whatever shape it turns out to be I can still call it a flower vase, but really I think it's the challenge of changing a simple cylinder into a usable object merely by the slight application of pressure from my fingertips. These are my three favorite. I consider them a sort of set, but each one is a gift for a teacher.

Welcome To My Neighborhood

I have never actually met any of my neighbors. We do the mutual "acknowledgment of existence" head nod if we see each other on the street, but there is rarely a "hello" that passes between us.

Despite this fact, I feel like I know my neighborhood pretty well. I know that the old woman next door gets up at 5:30am. She talks to her dog when she lets him out at 5:45a. I know that the garbage man is always two hours late, and the recycle man is thirty minutes early. I've recently come to realize that the man next door comes home every night at 11:30pm because I can hear the sliding doors on his van. And either the people across the street are very good about beating their dog every evening at 11pm, or that's when they put him in his kennel and he howls in protest.

Living in a such close proximity to people in houses where the walls are paper thin can make one either appreciate privacy or develop an addiction to gossip.

The Benefits of Old Age

The stationmaster is shouting politely on his blowhorn: "There are little children and elderly persons present. Please do not push or shove. Please wait patiently."

I am immediately elbowed out of the way by a 4'5" grey-haired grandma with two grandchildren in tow.

Hanabi Overtime

Yesterday there was a big fireworks show on Lake Biwa. Tomorrow there's one in Uji. This weekend there are a few scattered around Kansai, and next week there will be more. We have officially entered Hanabi Season.

As if there weren't enough national holidays and festivals, the Japanese adopted August as the unofficial month to celebrate summer - with massive amounts of fireworks. In many ways the shows are just like the more traditional festivals: families and friends get together, the girls wear yukata, and everyone lines up for snow cones and meat on a stick at the food stalls. The only difference is that instead of mikoshi, everyone stands ooing and ahhing at the very impressive bursts of fire exploding in the sky.

Last night's show at Lake Biwa was the most amazing fireworks display I have ever seen. It lasted a full hour. But even more impressive was the crowd control that quickly and efficiently shuffled thousands of people onto trains without extreme instances of shoving, screaming, or groping among the masses.

Where the streets have no names

I was just thinking about my address and I realized something that I hadn't noticed before. Most of the streets in Kyoto have no names. Of course the large streets do, 3rd St, 4th St, Kitaoji. But as soon as you turn off of those roads into the neighborhoods, you enter a land where the streets do not have names.

How do people have addresses then? The Prefecture is divided into Cities. The Cities are divided into Wards. The Wards are divided into Areas. The Areas are divided into Towns, and your house has a number. Sometimes in the downtown areas where there are more roads with names, the placement of your house could be described like in Ohio: on road A, just a little past road X.

All of this, however, makes driving directions a little difficult. When I tell people how to get to my house it involves lots of landmarks and counting of intersections. Of course, this is also why most vehicles in Japan have Navigation programs.

In any case, don't ask me how to get to my house. My number one landmark just went out of business.

The Smell of Summer

I love the smell of freshly mown grass. To me, it is the smell of summer. Unfortunately, no one owns a yard in Kyoto. And so, summer in Japan becomes another of those seasons that doesn't seem quite right. Winter has no snow, and summer has no mown grass.

The closest I can come to the smell of summer and the feel of something plant-like under my feet is tatami. Walking into a room with new tatami is like stepping out of your car into haying season. The distinctive fragrance of fresh tatami is overpowering to the point that some people can't be in the room too long with it, but at the same time it conveys a sense of the outdoors that one doesn't usually find in the city. The ban on slippers on tatami also means that inhabitants and visitors usually pad around in their barefeet, getting just a taste of what it's like to run around the front yard with your shoes off.

I am particularly grateful for my tatami room. Although it is too old to smell new, the woven straw still reminds me of my grandfather's hay mow. And whenever I walk across it, I feel just a little bit like I'm stepping onto a summer lawn.

Nowhere to go but down

Japan as a society is becoming more and more worried about Freeters and NEETS. Freeters (pronounced fureetahsu) are people who work part time jobs as their job. NEETs are Not in Education, Employment, or Training. Everyday their numbers increase, and every day there are more and more theories about how their existance came to be.

Some obvious reasons might be that the economy is bad or that companies are laying off more and more workers. I have to agree, however, with those who say that the largest instigator of this phenomenon is the Japanese family system. In particular, I would like to blame Japanese mothers.

Yes, it is true that in order to get into good schools your child must study more than a child should have too, and that the stress caused by the entrance exams is really quite a lot for a ten year old. However, is it necessary for you to bring your child meals, clean their room, and do their regular school homework so that they can study for this test? Do you really feel that it is beneficial to do everything for your child so that they cannot make decisions for themselves and need you to finish their sentences and tell them how to speak properly in social situations?

The fact that the Japanese family is so tight-knit is wonderful, up to a point. The tradition that children live at home until they are married has caused young adults these days to become reliant on their families. There is no need to find a real job, because they can always live with their parents. Everything they need is provided for them; they do not have to struggle for anything.

Japan became the developed country it is now so quickly because of the hard work of the older generation, and the young adults and children today are reaping the benefits. But will this easygoing lifestyle lead to the fall of Japanese society? And is America going the same way?

Super Star!

What happens when you go to frisbee practice for the first time in three months? You get an interview on Japanese TV.

Apparently, this guy from KBS, the local Kyoto station, was doing a little segment on activities going on by the river, and our practice field is by the river. He stopped in with his cameramen, asked us about the game, and then joined in! We played a few modified points and when we stopped he happened to be standing right by me.

Him (in English): Where are you from?
Me (Eng): America
Him: Do you play frisbee in America? A real team?
Me: Yes.
Him : Do you study here?
Me: Yes.
Him (switching to Japanese): How long are you in Japan?
Me (brain slowly switching to Japanese, stuttering*): One year.
Him: How is the level of this team compared to the US?
Me (being gracious in front of my team): High.

Of course he doesn't realize it, but I have been interviewed by this man before. Two years ago when I ran the Kyoto City Half Marathon, I appeared on his replay of the race show.

You can see me (if you live in Japan, particularly Kyoto) running around and stuttering in Japanese on August 21, 10:30pm on KBS.

*An explanation of the question "How long are you in Japan?" in Japanese: This question is in an ambiguous tense that always causes me confusion. I can never tell whether the person means, "How long have you been in Japan?" or "What is the length of your stay in Japan?" or "How long, from now, will you be in Japan?" In addition, the fact that I was here for a year, went back to the US for a year, and then have been living here again for a year, makes the answer a difficult one. Hence, there is much pausing, blubbering, stuttering as I struggle to decided which version of an answer they are looking for.

Shugakuin Imperial Villa

There are two Imperial Villas in Kyoto, Katsura Rikyuu and Shugakuin Rikyuu. If you're a foreigner visiting Japan, you have to sign up a few months in advance to get a tour. If you're Japanese, you have to put your name in a lottery and maybe, just maybe, you'll get to go in some time in your lifetime.

We foreigners went today. The first exceptional thing that came to my eyes was the space. Unlike the rest of Kyoto this villa is spacious, 133 acres. There are quite a few trees, bushes, and hills, but the overall effect is one of being very close to the sky. The fact that we are at one of the highest elevations in Kyoto (other than on a mountain) does not take away from the magnificent job the Emporer did in designing the villa to be a blending of the man-made with Nature. He employed what is called shakkei, the use of natural scenery to create a serene atmosphere. This is done particularly well by layering the views. The mountains provide a back-drop for the man-made lake and gardens which overlook the city of Kyoto in the valley.

Despite an unexpected thunderstorm which sent the tour guides scurrying for umbrellas, we spent a leisurely hour touring the simple but elegant resting places and houses. What impressed me most, however, was the presence of several rice paddies and vegetable fields on the edges of the property. Apparently, these were bought up in the 1960's to keep the scenery around the villa intact. And although they belong to the Imperial Household Agency, the fields are farmed by locals. The simple stalks of rice made a nice contrast to the stately pine trees lining the paths.