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...