Todaiji, A huge temple, a huge Buddha. From when Japan was quite a cosmopolitan country back there in the 8th century or so. You walk around the giant buddha. And the giant lotus leaves depict the infinite world and infinite buddhas on the infinite worlds. This is all symbolically represented by one huge giant Buddha, in the center. Its symbolic. Its Nara.
circles, circles. Circles animate things. Like a daibutsu, or like Studio Ghibli's animation. Or like pottery on a potters wheel.
tsuki, suki? (Do you like the moon?)
At this point I had eaten far too much mochi and started to have something of an allergic reaction to all the sugar- darn, hatsugashii.
Kobe is a beautiful city, Chinese dancing is also quite interesting.
Daikon mochi, luke warm and limpid, maybe even cold is not so delicious. Goma dango, hot with sesemi seeds wrapped in a little ball is quite delicious. Especially to the sound of Chinese music and acrobats.
From the "sweets harbour" kobe is an interesting array of colored lights.
Takatsuki is probably a place that not very many tourists go. Which is sad, because it is great fun. Tenjin was a guy who was exiled and then he made natural disasters so today he is honored at a large shrine ontop of a hill. The whole distance from the station to the shrine is lined with yatai shop stalls selling all kinds of luscious "fair food" worthy of someplace in middle america I suppose. asitgot dark the whole place filled up with "yankiis" or hoodlums, which was also very interesting, and everyone listening to Okinawa style music, Taiko drumming, and a really weird Enka singer who nobody could decide was a man or a woman. Oh Takatsuki, I love your style. I ate a full squid on a stick, about foot long and dripping in teriyaki style sauce. it was such a warm evening too. I'll miss the "french dogs" and spicy chicken hawked at me by very jovial and aggressive vendors...
The next day as I walked through a field drinking tomato juice I was stopped by a furooshya (a homeless man) on a bycycle who wanted to practice english. Quite a guy, he wanted me to go only to the less known sights of Kyoto and really love Japan!
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Make up time
Well, it has been a while since I posted last so I'll add snippets of things here and there. My mind has been all over the place and I havent been able to pin it down real well.
Shitsumon: means question. The kanji is made up first, places on top of a shell, like valuable places perhaps. The second kanji is a gate with a mouth underneath it. With voice, with question you create a gate, a gate to a new place, a valuable place. So we pass through gates with every question. Like the thousands of torii gates at Fushimi Inari, or the great Mon gates at temples.
On Shinto. It appears that actually we take a lot of things "on faith" every day. But that is just an expression. The world works in thousands of ways and works nearly seamlessly. We only see a disaster or a bad luck when the seam comes apart. Perhaps shinto is just keeping the seams all tide up, keeping the fabric of kami together. People go to shrines, ring bells, and they walk through torii, but actually anything that they do to maintain the system is actually respecting the kami as they are, alive. Paying money to the shrine in great quantity may have some effect, maybe. Like paying taxes because we make money. Jinja's (shrines) and Kaishas (companies) are made up of people after all. Or else the buildings just wouldnt matter.
The religion professor dosnt seem to notice these things, just focusing on what she calls, "religion."
She likes to focus on Sokka Gakkai, which seems to be loosely endorsed by Kansai Gaidai university. Where people dress up and talk, and try to learn languages in the process. Doshisha University had quite a different feel...
Anyway, with Sokka Gakkai you repeat this one line over and over and always get what you want. Scary, because sometimes that is not so good. This is what the prof tells us.
Gion, at night, famous for a reason, lamps, Geisha real or not walking down paths. Tourists (I like the sight of them, it is strangely heart warming, like I am in the right place), I walked down a little alley with brown walls and was right about to take a picture when a Maiko (Geisha in training) walked right there in front of me. She was beautiful, and I just couldnt take the picture. I just kindof bowed and let her pass, then got the crummy picture afterwards...
Shitsumon: means question. The kanji is made up first, places on top of a shell, like valuable places perhaps. The second kanji is a gate with a mouth underneath it. With voice, with question you create a gate, a gate to a new place, a valuable place. So we pass through gates with every question. Like the thousands of torii gates at Fushimi Inari, or the great Mon gates at temples.
On Shinto. It appears that actually we take a lot of things "on faith" every day. But that is just an expression. The world works in thousands of ways and works nearly seamlessly. We only see a disaster or a bad luck when the seam comes apart. Perhaps shinto is just keeping the seams all tide up, keeping the fabric of kami together. People go to shrines, ring bells, and they walk through torii, but actually anything that they do to maintain the system is actually respecting the kami as they are, alive. Paying money to the shrine in great quantity may have some effect, maybe. Like paying taxes because we make money. Jinja's (shrines) and Kaishas (companies) are made up of people after all. Or else the buildings just wouldnt matter.
The religion professor dosnt seem to notice these things, just focusing on what she calls, "religion."
She likes to focus on Sokka Gakkai, which seems to be loosely endorsed by Kansai Gaidai university. Where people dress up and talk, and try to learn languages in the process. Doshisha University had quite a different feel...
Anyway, with Sokka Gakkai you repeat this one line over and over and always get what you want. Scary, because sometimes that is not so good. This is what the prof tells us.
Gion, at night, famous for a reason, lamps, Geisha real or not walking down paths. Tourists (I like the sight of them, it is strangely heart warming, like I am in the right place), I walked down a little alley with brown walls and was right about to take a picture when a Maiko (Geisha in training) walked right there in front of me. She was beautiful, and I just couldnt take the picture. I just kindof bowed and let her pass, then got the crummy picture afterwards...
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