RainCastles Blog

April

Well, it’s been a while…nearly a month since the last dispatch. There’s been a lot going on since vacation has now ended, the semester has begun and things are in full swing. Yesterday was the first “real summer day” or well above 30C…we had about 32.6C and that’s around 90F, so as you can see right from winter to spring to summer already! I just wish that stuff would finish pollinating already! Between that and the horrible smog from China my allergies and asthma can only handle so much more of this…yes, I tried wearing a mask (ha-ha).

Trippin’
Early April was more trips and the such. I went to Onomichi with a friend of mine from Fukuyama to see about half of the 25 temples/shrines there. We had a really nice time and enjoyed all of the different temples/shrines. I’ve also been trying to go to the museums and such in and around Hiroshima that I haven’t been to, but want to be sure to get to before I return to the U.S. After all, if I am to be back in time for classes in September that means I return in August or in about 4 months! I also met more friends of friends this month at a luncheon and party and am really going to miss all of the interesting and kind people I have met. Time flies…

Spring in Japan and Hanami
So many flowers, especially wild trees & bushes, are blooming all around—not to mention the sakura or cherry blossoms! So many of the trees and bushes have flowers and blossoms before they get any leaves and look so pretty just sticks and flowers, so to speak. I’ll send a photo of some of the cherry blossoms I have seen…sometimes they seem to look like clouds of pinkish-white fluff—much like clouds outside of the plane when you fly. Hanami or the parties under the cherry blossoms are fun, but mostly because it’s a picnic with friends and apparently it’s very important to be under a tree…or so a colleague tells me. My “host family” and I had set April 8th as our big trip to Iwakuni to do hanami (cherry blossom viewing). We ate under the cherry blossoms then walked around a bit. Iwakuni is considered to be “THE” place to have a hanami party according to a colleague of mine. The area is lovely—a large river valley with a broad, but shallow river bridged by the famous (& huge) 5 bow bridge, Kintaikyo. According to a book I have, it was only permitted for samauri to cross the bridge and that commoners had to use a boat between town and the other side. It was constructed without the use of a single nail. It is an art of bridge building that has since been lost, partly in a typhoon in 1950 when the original bridge was destroyed. Besides the beauty of the bridge and area in general, the cherry blossoms of over 3000 sakura trees were in full bloom. It was an incredible site! It was too sunny to get a good photo from under the trees (by far the prettiest), but from the bridge you can see it looks like clouds of pink. Lovely!

We walked around Kikko Park a bit. It had previously been the residence of a feudal lord, Kikkawa. We also walked around an old samauri-type house and I took a photo of the garden since it seems so nice and serene.

Two of us also went in and saw the white snakes that are famous for this area. They are the only wild albino snakes that have white (normally a recessive gene) as a stable (dominant) coloring characteristic. The first white snakes were captured in 1738 and they still live around the Imazu River. They are considered bearers of good fortune and people are often happy if they find one in their home or on their property. There is a long-held tradition that regards the snake as a tutelary deity that brings good fortune.

Of course there were more hanami parties with colleagues and other friends, but those are maybe not as interesting and exciting as Iwakuni…not to mention, Iwakuni was my first hanami! : )

Takoyaki Party
This month, a group of us decided to have a girls’ takoyaki party and so we made all kinds of food, including takoyaki AKA small balls of batter with bits of octopus cooked in a special kind of pan that roughly looks like a muffin pan, but it’s electric and so you turn them over as they cook up. They you sever them with a bit of sauce and bonito flakes—YUM! We had a really good time and ate and talked all day!

Birthday
My birthday was this month and I had the pleasure of celebrating it twice. The first time was with a colleague of mine’s family. We meet at their house every Thursday for a kind of cultural exchange and the Thursday before my birthday they had a surprise birthday party for me. The kids were so cute....they had cut up ads to make colorful confetti and threw it at me when I came back into the room after washing my hands for dinner...then after dinner, we put it all back in the little box and played again with it...it was silly, but fun! I really had a nice time...they even made a kind of beef stew and had "cheese" (sour cream?) and homemade bread “like what [I] may have at home.” The cake—I wish I had a photo—had chocolate whipped cream frosting and was yummy! The 4 year old helped decorate it and from playing “cake shop” the last few weeks, he knew what I ordered on my cakes....I even got choco balls on the cake! I had kept teasing him before that I wanted a Chocoball [kind of like malted milk balls] cake, but he didn't have those in his little play set. I also received a picture from the kids that they each drew and the parents gave me a really nice chopsticks set with rests and cloths. Very nice and very small/pack-able, which is good so I can bring them home!

For my birthday, after bringing me a bouquet of flowers that my Partner had arranged with her and a whipped cream frosting cake from a friend of mine, she took me to Fude no Sato in Kumano, Japan. It is a museum of the Shodo or Japanese calligraphy brushes. The museum is great and the setting is lovely, with a pond, a dock and even many Koi or large goldfish/carp. It all even overlooks a valley. Then we decided to go in a Pachiko hall to waste a bit of time before dinner. It’s like pinball, but it’s upright and is a kind of gambling run by mostly Yakuza (Japanese mob) and Korean families apparently. It was interesting to see and try to figure out, but we really weren’t serious about it at all—it was just that neither of us had been in one before even though she is Japanese. I think it’s quite boring—and too smoky. Then we went to a yakitori or stick-food cooked over open coals called “Yakitori ii, ne.” It was food like chicken and spring onions (negi-ma) or quail eggs or tender chicken breast with sour plum paste and shredded chrysanthemum leaf or thinly sliced chicken wrapped around asparagus—it all was parts or products of a chicken (think of the quail eggs as honorary chicken eggs). It was all so delicious and I even had my favorite soda, Ca-ru-pi-su! I have decided that I am also a yakitori junkie and need to find a danglie for my phone that is yakitori to join my okonomiyaki one! Hee-hee! I had a really nice time and it was all so perfect, but also really missed everyone back home!

Firewalking
I had been looking forward to this for a while: Mid-April I went to Miyajima to see Hiwatari-shiki or Fire-walking Ceremony at the Daishoin Temple. It is a religious rite performed by the Shingon Sect of Buddhism. It started with a purification offering to the alter and the chanting of Buddhist sutras. Then Buddhist monks circle the area with swords, acting as though they are chopping at the pyre. Then they repeat the circling with seven arrows which they then shoot into the crowd. Everyone tries to catch one. Finally, the mountain monks blow their conch shells as the pyre is ignited. While the fire is burning, everyone moves around in the body to body crowd putting their sick body parts towards the fire. One old lady kind of explained to me that if something hurts or is sick, I should put it towards the heat of the fire. Since I was quite close, I could feel the heat on all of me anyway, but I did turn around, just to be sure my back might have caught a bit of it. She seemed satisfied that I understood her once I did this since before I did she kept explaining it to me again and again, just in case I suppose. Once the fire burns down and there are only red coals, the head Buddhist monk, followed by the mountain monks and worshippers, walk barefoot across the coals while chanting a prayer for good health and fortune. I decided not to do so since I did not know the sutra/prayer to say and I really don’t want to intrude on another’s religion. Unfortunately, that thought didn’t prevent some apparent U.S. military types from acting like idiots in the crowd (acting like they were punching the old people around them for moving too slowly) and while walking across the coals for overt photo-ops. The more I run into people from the base down near Iwakuni the less and less respect I have for these jerks the U.S. sends around the world without an ounce of respect for the people or countries in which they are living. I mean really—the temple gave out information in English about how this is a religious ceremony, etc.—probably because of this type of behavior in the past.

Noh
I also went to Miyajima the next day as well to see Noh theater at the “floating” Noh stage at the Itsukushima-jinja. It was interesting to see and watch, but since I didn’t know much about it, it seemed really slow and kind of odd. After a while, I didn’t mind though…next time I want to know a bit about the piece I am going to see though.

Office & Golden Week
Around this same time the university started up again and so I am back in the office on a nearly daily basis with my colleagues. I have started my interviews for my research and might even end up with more than I expected (but within my IRB approval) due to some contacts I have been given. We’ll see how that all goes…I get to work on transcriptions over this long “Golden Week” holiday, yippee…hmpf. “Golden Week” is a cluster of holidays, for example, this year April 29th, May 3rd, 4th, and 5th . Many people take the 2nd and the 6th of May off this year and people go home to visit family or to spas or to Aichi for the world expo—whatever. My big plans, besides transcribing, are to go to Onomichi Port Festival with a friend of mine from Nigeria and then to join my “host family” in Hiroshima City for the Hiroshima Flower Festival on the 3rd for the festivities that include parades, dancing, food, music stages, etc. It’s the second largest festival in the country during golden week and they expect something like over 2 million visitors for the festival—they even shut down Peace Blvd, which is a huge thoroughfare in the city! Rock on!

Teaching
Additionally, a friend of mine who owns a juku and for whom I have occasionally volunteered to fill-in when English teachers are sick has asked me to work for her, so I got the work permit paperwork approved by one and all and will be teaching 4 lessons a week at her juku. It’s a good experience for me since it’s an extension of what I have been doing at the local elementary school—except at juku it’s only 1-3 students per class for an hour per class. I like that and feel much more effective.

Here are some fun links for you to explore:
Okonomiyaki (Hiroshima-style savory pancake YUM!)
http://www.joyful.gr.jp/box3/english/tukurikata.html

Saijo (photos around Saijo)
http://www.arch-hiroshima.net/arch-hiroshima/arch/seto/saijo_e.html

Brewing Institute (anyone wanna work here?)
http://www.nrib.go.jp/English/English.htm

Just so you know, I’ll send the photos in three or four sets since some folks have small storage capacities…the first set are attached to this e-mail—ENJOY!

BLOG CONTEST: Attached is also a photo of something I have found here and find very interesting! The first person outside of Japan to tell me correctly what this is will win a prize!

Well, I wish you the best and hang in there!

Posted by cassl001 at April 29, 2005 4:55 AM