Fushimi Inari

Last week Richard and I took the train over to Kyoto and visited the Fushimi Inari Shrine. It's a ridiculously picturesque place with thousands of orange tori gates and guardian fox spirits. It's one of those places that makes you try to take artsy photos.  Like this...

Each of the gates are donated by families or companies. Inari is the patron of wealth and rice, so it's a logical place for businesses to donate to. The names of the donors are carved into the wood of the gates, on the side that is visible when you are descending/returning from the shrine. In the next picture the characters you see are actually the date that each gate was dedicated. The names of the donors are usually on the other leg of the gate.

Here we are wandering the lanes.

Foxes are messengers for the gods and there are tons of statues and other fox related items around the various shrines.  Below are some ema, small wooden plaques that you write your prayer on and leave at the shrine. Most major shrines have their own ema, usually reflecting whatever that shrine is famous for. These ema are particularly fun because you draw on the face of the fox.

So, there's a peek at the Fushimi Inari shrine. This week we went over to Nara to see the big Buddha at Todai-ji, but managed to forget the memory chip for the camera. There is a festival in Nara in a few weeks we might go to, so hopefully we'll get some Nara pics then.

あけましておめでとう！Happy New Year!

We rang in the New Year in Noda with the Ono family; eating piles of delicious crab and mochi, watching a New Year's music competition, and generally relaxing. When the clock struck midnight, we walked a few blocks from the house to the little neighborhood shrine. There a line of people had already gathered. We were all there to throw a coin into the shrine, clap our hands, pray for a good new Year and drink cups of hot sake. I don't have great shots, but here are a few pics of our view standing in line as we entered the shrine.

The tori, or gate, entrance to the shrine grounds. 

Through the heads you can see the area where you throw a coin, ring a bell, clap, and pray.

We didn't really decide on any New Year's resolutions, although we did kind of embark on preparation for some planned activities this summer (i.e. climbing Mt. Fuji with my parents). Call it Summer's resolutions. (Maybe then there is a chance we'll hold to them.) Last week, we decided that we needed some fresh air and a little climbing, so we headed to the outskirts of Kyoto to Mt. Kurama. Kurama is a small mountain with a shrine complex running up and down mountainside. There is a ropeway train that will whisk you up to the main shrine in a few minutes, but sticking with our Summer's Resolutions, we decided to hoof it all the way up.

Richard at the base of the shrine complex.

Snow! I missed you!

Looking back towards the Kurama station area.

Just getting up to Mt. Kurama already meant that we'd ascended into the mountains surrounding Kyoto. Osaka and Kyoto, like most cities in the valleys in Japan, don't usually get snow. But snow is usually present just a short train ride UP. We had a great combination of weather that day. It was cool enough that the snow stayed on the ground, but warm enough to be outside for hours without pain.

A view up one of the many staircases we climbed that day.

Still only about a quarter of the way there.

Pausing for some tree hugging.

Between the two of us, we've got the whole tree covered.

Some signs at the summit of Mount Kurama.

After reaching the top of Mount Kurama, we wound our way down a trail that took us to the area of the Kibune Shrine. 

This is a popular tourist area and the little road that we walked to get back to a train station was full of noodle shops, trinket shops, and green tea cafes. 

It was a bit too cold for us to stop this time, but we saw lots of tea drinking platforms next to this little river. It looks like a great place to come in the summer to cool off.

So that's the beginning of our Summer's Resolutions!

Interlude

We have some more blogging to do about our regional travels since returning to Osaka but I'd thought I'd fill the void with some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head.

It actually started when we were hiking through a temple area outside of Kyoto on Mt. Kurama. After our hard slog up the steep hairpin paths covered with mud and snow, we were almost racing down the hill as we headed back to the road. I/We'll probably go into more boring detail later about this up and down, but what I noticed as we descended was the constant "konnichiwa"s we we exchanged with those making the much slower ascent. After several of these it occurred to me that I was saying konnichiwa with much more fluidity and "correct" accent than many other words that I regularly use, and yet it still felt like a strange, special utterance each time. I know what it means, it made sense to be exchanging greetings with each group as we passed, but it still felt somewhat detached. After this went on for a while, the sense of strangeness increased and the word began to feel somewhat gnomic. It was as if konnichiwa were just the thing to say as we passed, and contained no actual meaning. I'm sure that this is common in one's native language as well and I'm just noticing it more because my Japanese skills are so limited. 

In any event, in the following days this led to other thoughts about language and living here in Japan. In particular, I've felt and increasing disjunction between my knowledge and study of Japanese with my ability to use it in the real world. I'm sure that things would be different if I had a regular native Japanese speaker to converse with, but as it is, I only get to use Japanese in restaurants, café's and other retail situations. At first, things were progressing apace and I felt like I was settling in to some sort of basic Japanese competency when it comes to understanding basic questions and making basic requests. But lately I've felt something of a slippage in my confidence in these situations. I was unsure what was going on... but then the other day it dawned on me. The large number of things I order at coffeeshops, etc., are simple transliterations from western languages. E.g., (in bad phonetics) "burendo koh-hee"="blend coffee", "hot-to tee"="hot tea", "my-oh-nay-zoo"="mayonaise", etc. 

At first I was just stumbling through by saying these things in English and pointing if they didn't understand. But now I've come to realize that even though they look English, French, etc., the pronunciation is so different that it really does matter how I say it and I can't just get by with my English pronunciations. So now I've got this traffic jam in my head when I see words that I know are borrowed from English but I have to use a Japanese pronunciation that doesn't feel at all natural. 

So these are some of the things that occupy my Japan-brain when I'm not slogging through facsimiles in French for my writing... I trust that you've been riveted to your seat by my musings on these vital issues in our time. 

Anyway, as I said, we'll have more to report about our winter shrine visitations soon. 

Roadshow! 12月23日!

In such a consumer driven society, it seems natural that cinema advertisements are elaborate and conspicuous - so much so that they have contributed greatly to my distracted-by-colorful-and-shiny-things behavior that often puts a full stop to an otherwise purposeful outing. One of my favorite parts is the use of the term "roadshow", which is apparently an older term for the initial limited run of big films before they head to all theaters. So we decided it would be both appropriate and hilarious (to us at least) to label our trip to Tokyo in this fashion. I even went so far as to make a movie poster...

So with the tone set, sit back and enjoy the film synopsis:
We join the glamourous couple as they strike out on their train ride to Tokyo. They have their bags and snacks, their entertainment devices (kindle, ipods, etc.) are fully charged. But their most exciting, and most challenging, possession is... THRIFT!
They draw out their Seishun 18 ticket, which gives them unlimited riding all day long, freeing them from the quotidian concerns of fares and the like. Indeed, they are poised for a nearly aristocratic experience of luxury on their trip east that is flawed in only one respect: they must use all local trains. They meet this challenge with aplomb, but somewhere past the halfway mark of their 14 trains of the day, their mood suffers and the glamourous sheen of train travel seems to have tarnished. They thought they were seasoned travelers - What would a few local trains do that the ravages of August and of grad school in general hadn't? Cue scenes of boredom, endless shifting in a seat that's alternately too hot and too cold, trying to balance a cat nap with the responsibility of keeping hold of your rolling suitcase. Yes, the trials were great but our heroes persevered, draw on by the irresistible charms of thrift. 

.....
Well, that's about as long as I can keep that up. one advantage of the local trains was that we had plenty of time to gaze at Mt. Fuji as we passed it (as opposed to the better view that lasts 30 seconds on the Shinkansen). The pictures were not the best, but here's one for your amusement.

I actually quite like this picture because gives a nice sense of the distance between us and Fuji and the fact that it is relatively densely populated in the surrounding areas.
Happy Merry Christmas...

Christmas day ended up being mostly awesome, with a trip to Yokohama, which brought us to a funny little mall, a KFC lunch (in keeping with Japanese Christmas traditions) and a nice ferry ride through Yokohama bay. (Cue next "artsy" picture)

We then finished up with a dinner of Shabu-Shabu and Sukiyaki. This was my first time for either, and the sukiyaki especially blew my mind with the dipping of quickly cooked meat into a raw egg. 

...sort of
By this point things seemed like they were going well for this trip, we were in a funny little hostel that night and had a few more days of low-key activity planned before a small excursion to Hamamatsu before returning to Tokyo for New Year's. By Wednesday night, however, it became clear that this would not be the case. After going out to see the new James Bond film in the theatre, I started to feel slightly unwell, a feeling which soon revealed itself to be a stomach flu. As you might imagine, this made the prospect of more local trains rather unwelcome, so we just hung around Tokyo some more while I gradually returned to the world of the living. 

In a way, though, this ended up being something of a good thing. Because of the holidays there were more closures of places that Rachel need to go than we expected and so the extra time in Tokyo allowed her to more leisurely and thoroughly visit museums and the National Diet Library before we made our way to the suburbs for some low key New Year's festivities.
A Return to Shiny Things

We had some great food and just general good times hanging out, but the focus of the evening was the Kohaku Uta Gassen. This is a New Year's eve special shown every year on NHK. The nominal format is a competition between teams of men and women, colored in red and white, respectively. What it ends up being in reality, however, is four hours of hit after hit after hit performed with overdone productions, usually involving lots of costume changes (especially for the girl/boy groups, who are enamored of "medleys" of their songs). Despite my somewhat patronizing description, I was completely hooked. Especially to the following song.

This will be my karaoke jam for 2013. 

The truth about Wasabi

I'm just going to come out with the difficult truth. Richard and I have been struggling with it, but we've reached that stage of resigned acceptance when you realize you can't change something.

Wasabi is a bit of a hipster.

Working on his new twitter profile pic. Previous attempts didn't properly showcase his "expressive eyes."

All the signs were there. He was supremely uninterested in our daily activities until there was food to pose with.

Wasabi with kimchi udon nabe (winter stew). Wasabi is still withholding judgement on this "spicy upstart," his name for kimchi.

He'll only come out with us if we're going to foodie restaurants that feature fresh takes on classic comfort food.

Eyeing our selections at Butter, a gourmet pancake restaurant in Osaka.

He's decided to only drink really cheap beer...or really expensive beer. And by drink, I mean mooch off of Richard and me.

Horning in on Richard's Bitburger at the German Christmas Market.

He consented to come with us on a recent trip to Tokyo, but only because we planned on staying in cheap hotels and hostels.

Rachel's smile is a bit strained in this photo because Wasabi kept trying to get her to plank with him on this bridge in Asakusa.

We almost missed several trains because Wasabi wanted to take artsy travel photos of his luggage. After which, he berated us for not having any obscure band stickers on our luggage.

This pic was proceeded and followed by inarticulate mumblings about how the predominance of grey in our luggage choices was in fact an expression of the trend towards modern minimalism in today's design climate.

We finally gave into his demands and kept clicking away until we caught a shot with a moving train in the background.

Wasabi is proud of this pic because of the matching red line on the train and the man's red bag. Apparently, there's "color resonance" across the image.

We've decided that to address Wasabi's hipsterism directly would only make the matter worse. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated during this difficult time.