Day 23 - Time Travel, Part 2

It's thursday here, and when leave (along with the flight crews that also use this hotel) I will be heading straight to the airport. There's a mall attached and that should keep me busy until I want to get through security. Sad to say, this is to be my last real entry. Sometime after I get back I'll go through and put all my photo albums together with captions and that will come up on here, but this is the last time I'll be writing a real post. After all, this is about me in Japan, and tomorrow I won't be in Japan anymore.

I have decided that to summarize my trip, I will tell you the top 10 things I'm going to miss about Japan.

10- The Time Zone
              Now, technically, this one is more of a joke than anything else. I won't miss anything about this time zone in particular, as it is intrinsically no different from any other time zone. But I know I will miss it when I'm tired for three days because my clock is wrong. This is also the reason for my title. I've decided that traveling forward in time is easier than traveling back. Because I managed to get a whole day ahead with only using 14 hours last time, but now it will take me 14 hours to go back in time by one hour. Yes, I will leave here at 4pm the 23rd of June and arrive at Dulles around 3 on the 23rd of June. I won't get to Albany, my final destination until 7:15, but that's not time travel.

9- The Beds
              My beds here, even in the hotel, are not the typical western-style mattresses, but rather the futon mattresses that Japanese use. Normally they are on the floor, but in western-style rooms they put them on bed frames. I find futon mattresses to be more comfortable and more firm than western spring mattresses, and I even had one once.

8- The Language
                I've been studying Japanese for three years, and I finally had a chance to use it practically. Now, I'm going back to a town where not a soul speaks the language, so my ability can stagnate for the rest of the summer and I can come back to Cornell having forgotten things that I learned. As has happened each year since I started learning it.

7- The Trains
              For three weeks, I have been able to go wherever I want for free, traveling more miles in a day than I usually cover in a week back home. And the trains are comfortable, far more than any car, and I don't have to drive them so I can sleep if I like, or just look at the scenery. They're also a lot faster than cars, too, at least getting around cities and taking the shinkansen across country, because they can cut a straight line where cars have to turn. I will miss the daily train travel I have been experiencing,

6- The Drinks
               The flavor of pretty much every drink is different than what we have in America. Here they have a bit of a sweet tooth for drinks. This isn't to say that they have a lot of sugar, but on average their sodas are sweeter than the common ones in America. This could be because the cola taste reigns supreme in American sodas, but here you find more sweet flavors, like Calpis' original flavor, Ramune flavor, and Mitsuya Cider. I don't know if I can go back to drinking Coke after this. It has never been my favorite, but now I know there's so much better.

5- The People
               I kept expecting it to change, but every single Japanese person I have met has been outstandingly nice to me. People have offered to take my picture for a souvenir on multiple occasions, and everyone here is happy to learn about why I've come to Japan and what I'm doing here. They care a whole lot about a stranger tourist and its something I've grown accustomed to. If I even look lost, someone comes to help me before I even ask, even if I am not in fact truly lost. So that's nice. People in America are all jerks compared to the Japanese.

4- The Melon Flavor
                 This is a Flavor of both food and drink that just isn't popular (or exists, really) in America, and that is a shame. I've had melon flavored rolls, melon-filled rolls, melon flavored shaved ice, melon flavored ice cream bars, and lots of melon flavored soda. I would even say that it is my new favorite flavor, and now I'm going back to a place that doesn't have it and that makes me sad.

3- The Architecture
               So, the square brick buildings aren't anything to look at, but I much prefer the traditional Japanese style to the Victorian style on comparable houses in America. The roof tiling is so nice, and I like the gardens. The modern style buildings in Japan are more innovative and interesting to look at than any I've seen in America, too. Also, the green innovations I've seen in Japan have given me a lot to think about.

2- The Food
               I have historically been quite picky about my Japanese food. I'll go to a restaurant that claims to be Japanese even if it isn't run by Japanese people or truly cooked in the right way, and I'll enjoy it, but I won't ever call it Japanese food. There are only two restaurants that I've been to that can compare to the food here, and that includes food that is shared between our two countries. Even the burgers taste better here. Now some, like my girlfriend, would say that I only like it more because I'm obsessed with Japan, and that could be true. But I would rather assume that what my friend from New Zealand at the dormitory told me is true: in America, restaurants are obsessed with portions more than with taste, and in Japan, the reverse is true. That's why I think everything, even American food, tastes better in Japan. Also, the snack foods here have America's beaten as well. The rolls and pastries are amazing and I have found no equal for these bakeries. Also, they have delicious red beans in everything, and I've come to be fond of those too.

1- The Adventure
               I'm heading back to a village of a few hundred permanent residents that I've lived in all my life to work a 40 hour/ week job. Everything will be familiar, and even though that can be good as well, I know I will miss the daily adventures I've been going on here, learning and exploring and always seeing new things around each corner. There is a lot to be said for a place that has more than once taken my breath away. I can think of at least three times in which I have come around a corner and all I could say was 'wow'. The massive Cemetary in Kyoto, the amazing view of Mount Fuji, and the Daibutsu at Kamakura were all times like this. I won't miss the blisters, but I'll miss the things I did to earn them.



There it is! I can't believe it's over. It feels like I haven't been here very long at all, but I know it was a long time for my friends and family at home. It's good to be going home, but bittersweet.

It has truly been an honor to write to you all every day, and I hope that when I next see you in person you've all been devoted readers with lots of questions for me.

I'll see you on the other side!

Signing off for now,
Cory

Day 22 - It's Day 22 and I have run out of witty titles

Today is my last full day in Japan. Tomorrow I will be writing my blog post in the morning, which to you will seem like I wrote it the same day as this post, but to me it won't be.

For my last full day in Japan, I visited Matsumoto, which is about two and a half hours north of Tokyo. This would have been an impossible day trip from Osaka, but it's doable if you're in the Tokyo area, just remember that the trains to Matsumoto don't run often, so you should plan some extra time for waiting at train stations (I learned this the hard way).

On the way there, I had a pleasant surprise: on the way to Matsumoto, you have a very cool view of the North side of Mt. Fuji. I never got the shot I wanted, which is from the more visible south face. It can be taken from the train from Osaka to Tokyo, but the clouds usually cover Mt. Fuji, and so it hasn't been visible at all on any of my trips to tokyo. Today, however, I could finally see the summit.

You can see the pictures  here, but for some reason, it won't let me upload the Mt. Fuji pictures to the blog right now. On the way to Matsumoto the summit was clear, but on the way back a small cloud clung to the top of the mountain.

Matsumoto Castle is also called the Crow Castle, because of its distinctive and unique black coloration. Unlike the Osaka castle, which is a ferro-concrete reproduction created after the original was destroyed in WWII, Matsumoto Castle still has all the original wood and stone work. Where the Osaka castle was a modern museum devoted to what the castle had once been, complete with escalators, Matsumoto Castle instead is completely preserved internally.

Castles in Japan are either one of these two (original or reproduction). Purists to castle hunting in Japan usually say that the original castles are much better than the reproductions because they are 'authentic', but having been to one of each, I would rather say that each has its own purposes and effects. I didn't truly understand the structure of castles until my visit to the Crow Castle today, but the  museum at this castle had less of the history of the castle and was more a lesson on its structure. I did learn that it was controlled for 30 years by Takeda Shingen, one of my favorite Medieval figures.

The Takeda Shingen story is long and full of details, so I will give you the summary. For years and years Takeda Shingen, also called the Tiger of Kai, had wars with his rival Uesugi Kenshin, or the Dragon of Echigo. Both were renowned tacticians and they fought to a draw on at least four separate occasions. I like to imagine they had a bit of a friendly rivalry by the end of their conflicts with one another.

The castle was taken by Oda Nobunaga when he tried to unify Japan, which is also an interesting story about the Tiger of Kai. Takeda Shingen was the only Daimyo (Warlord) in Japan with the tactical prowess to stop the Oda conquest from taking over all of Japan. At the battle of Mikatagahara he used his battle expertise to defeat the combined armies of Oda and Tokugawa. He later died of mysterious circumstances in camp and without his leadership his armies soon fell, but one wonders if Japan would ever have unified if he had lived to thwart the Oda plans.

But I digress. The castle itself was magnificent, and not for the first time a nice Japanese person offered to take my picture in front of the castle when I was standing outside. I have decided that Japanese are simply a lot nicer to tourists than Americans are, on the average.

Like I said before, all the original woodwork survived the widespread firebombings of WWII, which some would contribute to luck, but I like to think it has something to do with a legend I learned today. Apparently, a specter of a rice goddess (or something, I don't really remember) showed up on the wall one night and gave the guard a bag of rice. If they agreed to deify the rice and make offerings on the 26th of every month...and this is the word for word translation now...the spirits would protect the castle from "fire and enemies". Which basically sums up WWII. And still the castle survives today, so that could have something to do with it.

Also among my pictures you will see another discovery I made today: my bathroom has a small square of mirror space that is heated, so that it never fogs. I think that's pretty neat.

Cory

Day 21 - Goodbye Osaka

When I checked out this morning it was a bittersweet moment. For one, I was glad to head to a bigger room with a shower that doesn't cost money to use and my new reservation for the last two nights was a third of the price of the average price. It's usually a $150/night hotel and I got it for $45 a night. I'm not trying to use this blog for advertising, but I have to recommend Agoda discount hotels for such a great find. Anyway, I got back my security deposit (about $40 that I had honestly forgotten about) and Kazu-san and his wife were both downstairs to thank me for spending my time there and they even offered to take my picture in front of the Dormitory when I stood around for a little while longer to take pictures.

Yes, I have heard your requests to see my living conditions, and so I was taking pictures.

Anyway, I realized that no matter how nice my hotel was, it could not be any nicer than Kazu-san and his wife were to me during my stay. If I ever come back to Osaka, even if I am not staying at the Dormitory, I plan to stop by and rent my bicycles from him. It was very sad to go knowing I won't be going back, and I didn't even run into my australian friend.

He must have been out teaching before I got up, but lately I have been telling him all about what I did every day and he has been sharing his experiences with teaching English in Japan. It was nice to talk to him and I'm sad that I missed him.

Let me clarify one more time why I'm staying in Tokyo for the last two nights. Originally I had planned to hop the Shinkansen from Osaka on the 23rd and go straight to the airport for my flight, but then I realize that my Rail Pass expires a day before my flight leaves. The train from Osaka to Tokyo without a rail pass is about $150 dollars, so I figured why not spend a night in Tokyo for less than that and already be at the airport the day of my flight?

Then, when I was planning to go to Matsumoto castle, which is an hour northwest of Tokyo, I discovered I would have to go through Tokyo anyway, and then I would spend 8 hours on a train to do that trip from Osaka. So I decided to spend a second night in Tokyo so that I could just go to the castle directly from there (tomorrow).

As it turns out, I saved more than I expected. Agoda's website hooked me up with the fanciest hotel I've ever been in, it must be 4 or 5 stars, for $45 a night, and then my landlord charged me less for my stay at the Dormitory because I was checking out two nights earlier. In all, I saved at least $80 and now I won't have to take any more money out for the rest of my trip.

The hotel I'm in now is something else. You can see the pictures here. Here's something you can't see in the pictures: the pillows are filled with goose down. Yes the hotel is fantastic. Also, I have discovered a number of really cool things that I don't think they even have in American hotels. First, I have a doorbell. And there's this switch on my end table that turns off the doorbell button that sits outside and puts a 'do not disturb' light on instead. Also, they have given me complementary slippers and japanese casual wear for my stay. One of the coolest (and greenest) innovation in my room is that in order for anything in the room to be powered, my room key has to be in a socket just inside the door. So when I leave, everything automatically shuts off. It's impossible to leave something running when you go out for the day, and waste electricity.

I got here around 6pm, after going through Narita Airport to get the shuttle bus, and I decided to scout out the area around my hotel. Narita, which is a smaller city outside tokyo, seemed at first to be a hodge-podge of a small town with big hotels. It struck me as odd that there wasn't anything around. But if you walk for about half an hour down the main road and make a couple turns, you get to a large mall (are there any small malls in Japan?) and an entertainment complex with a movie theater and an arcade. At the mall, I had an excellent bowl of curry noodles at a noodle shop. I also spilled some curry on my pants, but I just did laundry so I have enough pants.

On the strip near the huge mall there are countless restaurants, like the Mamma Pasta and a bunch of Japanese restaurants whose names I couldn't read. And some I could but couldn't translate. As you walk back towards the Garden Hotel where I'm staying, these fade into an auto parts district full of dealerships and repair shops and parts warehouses. And then you come to this:

No caption needed.

The yuletide abomination before you is a Santa-themed hotel across the street from mine. Mine looks much calmer and probably costs a lot more money. But still, somehow I think this place could only exist in Japan or maybe Las Vegas. 

Oh, and there was a fancy temple down the road that I saw looming over the tree tops. If I have time tomorrow I'll go down that way, but I still have to see Matsumoto castle and finish some shopping in Tokyo first.

Cory

Day 20 - Japan Hates Mondays

Tomorrow morning I will pack my bags and head to Tokyo to stay at a cushy hotel (that I am paying a third of the price for, thank you online discount website). Tomorrow I will take pictures of my cleaned room to show you where I've been living. But I spent my last day here doing a couple of things I still had to do.

First, I went to the Human Rights Research Center that I found last week to meet with Honda-san and talk about the Burakumin issues in Japan. I learned quite a bit about the current state of affairs from him. This was the reason I went, because I already have a firm handle on the historical situation.

The basic picture is this: the minority burakumin have traditionally been silently segregated into certain communities, like the Osaka community of Imamiya. These groups have been provided with poorer infrastructure and the people in these communities are usually of low social status. The areas are called 'buraku', and the people burakumin. This I already knew. But I didn't understand why it had remained like this. There used to be institutionalized discrimination, but in modern times that has been abolished and made illegal. So why does it still exist?

Well, the areas they come from are still poorly served, and few people leave them. They often remain in the community because of discrimination from without. This discrimination is often perpetuated by parents or grandparents telling their young children that 'those are bad people'. This is the same way that racism is perpetuated in America even today. But here, people don't want to talk about the issue, the way that they have in America. There hasn't been a massive buraku movement until recently, certainly more recently than the Civil Rights Movement was. So the burakumin continue to face social separation and segregation that borders on self-segregation, but is not truly self motivated.

The problems are that their basic human rights are violated merely because they were born in a low-status community, which was in turn created by human rights violations. This is why it is so hard to break the cycle.

And the side effects are frightening. I recently heard of a happening in India caused by similar class-based discrimination in which a young girl was murdered...by police. The story is graphic and not intended for children (there are details other than the murder that you can probably guess) so I will not provide a link here, because I may have younger readers. Needless to say, this has to stop. That's why the study of issues like this is so important. That's why I came to talk to Honda-san.

At the conclusion of our talk, he gave me information about an online newsletter--in english--that his center puts out, and sometimes talks about burakumin issues. I plan to keep reading it.

I want to apologize for the heavy nature of the above. As a change of pace, let's talk about today's title.

Yes, I think Japan hates mondays, more so than most people. This is half a joke. Nevertheless, where most businesses in America have Sunday as a day off or day with reduced hours (a holdover from the strong Christian prohibition against work on sundays that was popular in early America) in Japan, most museums, zoos, and temples are closed on Mondays.

That was, alas, what happened at parts of the temple I visited today. Luckily, however, the primary complex and fancy gardens were both kept open all week.

The temple, Shitennoji, is said to be the oldest temple in Japan, founded by Prince Shotoku in 593 AD. Shitennoji is a temple in honor of the Shitenno, or four heavenly kings. Tomorrow, the 21st, there will be a massive flea market all across the complex. In fact, today you can see some of the booths in one of my pictures. The structure itself is typical of Buddhist structures. It has a 5 story pagoda and a grand hall and four gates in the cardinal directions. It also has a garden which I assume also doubles as a tea garden. I took a stroll in the garden filled with waterfalls and trimmed trees and fancy landscaping (like stone bridges).

Oh! I almost forgot about the turtles!

The turtles.

This was taken in front of one of the grand halls. They had a bridge separating two ponds filled with turtles. It seems like Buddhist things are always a home to wildlife. If you remember, there was a spot near a temple on the Philosopher's walk in Kyoto that had five or six stray cats. Anyway, I liked the turtles, so I will share them with you. I also believe in at least one picture per blog entry to give myself to come up with an amusing caption. 

Cory

Day 19 - Come for the Panda...

I feel like I've started too many of my posts with "today, I...". It's difficult to go an entire entry of a daily journal, however, without using this gem. I've tried various strategies to combat it, including this one you see here before you: self-referential openings. But I still said it.

So anyway, I went to the zoo today. Not just any zoo, but Ueno Zoological Gardens, the oldest and most famous (and also largest, I think) zoo in Japan. It was founded in 1882. This was after the Imperial Government abolished the Shogunate but before there was any constitution in Japan (the constitution was enacted in 1890). The zoo now holds about 2600 animals from over 450 species. So it's kind of a big deal. It also has pandas! Now, I know that there are pandas in zoos in the US, but the pandas are the big draw at the Ueno zoo. In my pictures of Ueno from last week, I took some of various store fronts that had a panda motif. All the stores in the Ueno district have stuffed pandas for sale in addition to whatever else they're selling. They're pretty fond of their pandas.

And you can tell in the zoo, too. There's this massive roped off area like the line to get on a ride in front of the panda enclosure. I showed up early enough that I did not have to wait, but on my way out of the park I saw that the wait to see the pandas was at least 45 minutes, probably longer. They are such a big draw that they have to arrange lines for people to take their turn to view them. And whenever a panda so much as rolls over everyone screams bloody murder. It's both amusing and frightening. 

So while I was excited to see the pandas, the most fun can be had away from the large crowds and long lines. For example, they have a rarely-advertised birds of prey exhibit with a number of owl species and quite a few hawks. They also have a vulture who, about halfway through my walk through the bird zone, decided he didn't like all the attention and started making noise and stalking back and forth across the front of the cage, as if getting ready to attack the people below him.

"Get off my lawn!"

The zoo also has a few surprisingly averagely-priced eateries. This seems to be a difference between America and Japan. Put anything in a paid or secured area (like inside zoos, theme parks, or inside the secure zone of airport terminals) and food tends to be priced higher than average. This is because they have a captive and presumably hungry audience. But here, even in the train stations for the long-distance Shinkansen lines, the food is reasonably priced. I was very surprised by how cheap things were at the zoo.

My favorite part was the gorilla exhibit. Because at this time the Ueno zoo has a baby gorilla. He would run around the bigger, lazier gorillas and try to play or bug the other gorillas. He would slap this one other gorilla across the face repeatedly until the bigger gorilla would grab his hand in mid-flight and push him away. Then the baby would run around the enclosure looking for something else to do. I feel like I got a few really good pictures out of the gorillas.

This is my favorite.

But it was a close battle for 'best exhibit'. They also had a reptile/amphibian building kept at an uncomfortably high temperature that contained a ten foot crocodile. It was the biggest croc I've ever seen, and I used to go to Florida every year and do fun things there like go to the Everglades. But I suppose those are mostly not saltwater crocodiles, either. The baby Hippos were also some of the most adorable animals ever. You can see the pictures of all the animals I saw today here and here.

On my way back I was lucky enough to walk past a set of fountains near my dorm that were going through a light-show thing that I didn't realize they could do. The spouts from numerous fountains are illuminated and the colors are constantly changing. I tried to get a bunch of angles, and those pictures are also in the album. But here's one to give you a taste.

Tomorrow is my last day in Osaka, and then I move to Tokyo for the last two nights of my trip!

Cory

Day 18 - Rain

If you read my blog every day, you know that I've been to some of the most important Buddhist temples in Japan. Well, today I visited the most sacred Shinto Shrines in Japan, located at Ise, southeast of Osaka on a peninsula.

The area is heavily rural. In many places the train went through acres of farmlands with only small towns or villages separating them. It was the most rural side of Japan I've seen yet. I also noticed I could no longer see the mountains in the distance. This was not just because it was raining, but also because Ise is in a lowland region near the coast.

The train I had to take was a member of the Japan Railways group, or JR, and my unlimited rail pass works for all JR lines. However, this particular train passes over rails owned by another company. This occurs in a couple of different lines across Japan. The result is an additional fee, not covered by my rail pass, on both trips (there and back).

Anyway, once I got there, I bussed my way out to the far shrine. There are two main shrines in Ise, the Geku and the Naiku (or Outer Shrine and Inner Shrine) about a mile or two apart. Both of them are interesting because they show a style of architecture that is purely Japanese. There are no influences from China like you see in Buddhist temples. The roofs are thatched, rather than tiled, and they are capped with crosspieces of wood. On the fancier shrine buildings this wood is colored gold.

Like this.

The Ise Shrines, both Geku and Naiku, are unique among Shinto shrines in that, by tradition, they are systematically taken down and rebuilt every 20 years. And I mean every structure on the premises. This is partially meant to preserve ancient construction methods, as the construction is always done without nails or fasteners and rather uses interlocking pieces pioneered centuries ago. In many places there are empty plots next to the buildings where they will next be rebuilt (in 2013). You can see the plots in some of my pictures.

The Ise Shrines are dedicated to some of the highest level Shinto kami, or gods. There are also more than a hundred other shrines connected to the two grand shrine complexes. The Ise shrines are some of the most sacred ground in all of Japan. There are a number of side effects of this sacredness. The main complexes, for example, are off limits to the general public. You can go to the satellite shrines and come close to the main complex, but the three largest buildings are surrounded by a vision-obscuring fence over which you can only see the tops of the buildings. Photography is forbidden in the one place you can go inside the fence, so unfortunately I cannot show you what I saw. I will say this, though. The one yard in front of the shrine is filled with black pebbles, and the path is made of white pebbles.

The Ise shrines are partly so sacred because they are believed to contain the legendary mirror Yata no Kagami of the Imperial Regalia of Japan, also known as the Three Treasures. The other two are a sword (Kusanagi) and a jewel (Yasakami no Magatama). These treasures are passed down by the Imperial family and fiercely protected. Each one is an artifact as important as the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence is to the United States. As such, the high priest or priestess of the Ise shrine must be from the Imperial family. Unlike the Declaration and the Constitution, though, the artifacts are kept secretive, and even the mirror's presence at the shrine is not admitted by the government. Still, it was worth it to go to the most sacred Shrines in Japan, even if I could only see their roofs.

Cory


  

Day 17 - Everything's bigger in Tokyo

I set out this morning planning to explore some important regions of Tokyo, and it took more time than I had planned.

Well, let's be honest. Tokyo is pretty big. So I shouldn't have been surprised that I couldn't explore nearly as much as I wanted to. It didn't help my mission any that I was on foot and a tight schedule. Still, I managed to scope out the central areas of Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, and Akihabara today.

I know those are gibberish to most of you. I'll get there.

First I went to Ikebukuro. Forget what I said about the enormous department stores in Osaka. Ikebukuro is home to two of the largest in the world: the Tobu and Seibu dept. stores. I only went to one, Seibu, figuring that they were really about the same. Honestly, it was very much similar to the one in Osaka, except for the size. The Seibu in Tokyo is at least ten stories. And one of them is a full blown supermarket. It was so huge that I only explored a couple of floors, checked the map, and ignored the parts I didn't care about (mostly women's fashion...and men's fashion. I didn't come to Japan to improve my image).

On their food floor there was a vast array of cakes (yes, I know. Now I find cake...), Japanese treats, vegetables, as well as meats and fried foods of all kinds. And fish. The place smelled strongly. It should be noted that the worlds largest Department store is in Yokohama, Japan, and is also a Seibu.

When I finished there, I went over to Shinjuku, one of the biggest shopping districts in Japan. I hear it also has a sword museum, but I couldn't find it. Everything is huge in Shinjuku. There is a massive mall complex in a skyscraper, and four whole floors of it are devoted to Tower Records. That's right. There are four story music stores in Japan.

More interestingly, I've been nearing the end of my book after riding six to eight hours in a train every day for the last week. So I was looking to buy the sequel. I found this.

You probably can't read the words, but do you see that lavender color on the floor map? That's a book store. A seven-story book store. Literally the coolest thing I have ever seen. It reminded me of the two-story bookstores I've been to in America, except for the fact that it is mostly Japanese books. But if any bookstore in Japan would have the sequel to my American novel, it would be this one.

I was actually very impressed by their selection of foreign books. Fully half a floor is devoted to books in other languages, mostly English. I found my book, and almost bought a couple more, before I remembered that I was running out of space to pack things in. 

After Shinjuku, I went to Akihabara. Akihabara is the center of Japanese "Otaku" culture, which basically means a hardcore fan of a particular thing. This is a big cultural difference from America. If an American in his twenties, working for a business company, collected statues of giant fighting robots from an animated television show, it would be ridiculous. But in Japan, while it is still not a mainstream habit, it does happen. Most of the people in the hobby and model shops were people in suits.

I have puzzled long and hard over why this and many other forms of Otaku culture spring up in Japan while they are thought of as uniformly immature in America. I think it has something to do with the group nature of Japanese society. In high school you most likely wear a uniform and you are expected to be in clubs and devote yourself to that group. The same happens in college, and when you enter the workforce you are likely one of many people working for a massive corporation, and you sort of get lost. My theory is that it's a way for Japanese to be individuated while still being a group member during the day. 

I also would like to clarify the difference in Japanese animation "anime" and American "cartoons". I find this also is a reason for the difference in fandom here versus America. In America, "cartoons" are traditionally for children. There are exceptions (South Park, Family Guy), but for the most part cartoons are considered for children. In Japan there is no such distinction. Sure, there are anime for children, but there are also anime for adults, and for specific groups. Certain anime appeal to young men and boys while other appeal to middle aged housewives. It is as diverse as dramas are in America. Also, anime have, without question, an overarching plot that encompasses multiple episodes in a linear way. American television (not just cartoons) is often serialized in such a way that you don't need to watch in any particular order. But with anime, it's all about the story. It breeds a much more plot-oriented audience, which invests them in the characters, and so they remain fans for much longer.

That's my theory, anyway.

I didn't get many pictures today, as I mostly walked in and around stores and they don't like you taking pictures. But here they are.

Cory

Day 16 - The Other Daibutsu

Nara was the first official capital of Japan, and the first place where Buddhism came to this country. It is now also famous of its deer park that surrounds the plethora of Buddhist temples. Among these temples is Todaiji, arguably the most famous temple in Japan.

The first thing I noticed was the deer. They populate a vast expanse in Eastern Nara that is home to Todaiji, The Nara Museum, and a number of shrines and temples. These deer are mostly tame, although there are signs to remind you that they are wild animals and sometimes attack people. That was a comforting thought.

At any rate the Daibutsu this time was under a building. Not only is the statue larger than the one in Kamakura, the building is the largest wooden structure in the world. That was something worth seeing. I headed on inside and even bought a buddhist charm. It was more a souvenir than any belief it would work, but I got the charm for gaining new skills easily.

see the rest of today's pictures here

Todaiji, the main temple in Nara, was once the head Buddhist temple in all of Japan, and actually grew so politically influential that the emperor moved the capital away from Nara just to be out of their influence. 

When I was done looking at the giant statue of Buddha (you'll have to look at my gallery for that one. If you missed it the link is up there under the picture), I went up the hill to another temple that had a great view out over all of Nara and the temple complex. I didn't even realize I was on a mountain until I looked out and saw how much higher than the rest of the city I was. It was at this point that it really started to rain. 

The rain picking up and turning into a downpour, I decided maybe it wasn't so good to keep walking around the temple complex. I was stopped, repeatedly, on my way out by more elementary school children asking me my name and things about me. At least this time they were grateful enough to give me a sticker and a pamphlet for the area they were from (It was the Gifu region, if anyone was wondering). This will make the 9th time I have been interviewed by small Japanese children. At first it was entertaining, and on some level it still is, but I really didn't want to stand out in the rain to talk to them.

But I am too nice of a person to say no to small children asking in broken English if they can talk to me. 

Around the temples there are a bunch of small stores with souvenir nick-knacks, and on the route from the station I found a Japanese antique store. I am declaring it the coolest store ever. If you think old things are cool, and Japanese things are cool, then it is awesome to walk into a store with Samurai helmets (both full size and decorative), Masks of all kinds (used in Japanese theater), swords, and ceramics. I spent a while just walking around trying not to touch anything. The whole 'you break it you buy it' thing is only okay if the items in question aren't upwards of 500 dollars. By the way I found a $500 carved elephant tusk in there. That was kind of cool.

The deer in the area mostly ignore you, passively eating grass or walking around. Until you buy the deer crackers. They sell little packets of deer crackers all over the park, and the second one of them smells the crackers, they're all over you. Someone volunteered to take pictures of me trying not to get eaten.

They can be aggressive.

The things are so interested in food that as soon as they see you with the crackers they come over to you. And they aren't shy. So if you hold the crackers too low they will take them right out of your hands. Two fun stories from my deer-feeding experience (besides the story about the picture above). If you feed one deer and another sees you, it might just start looking for food. More than once I felt a tug on my pocket as a deer started nibbling on my pants. One even went into my pocket and tried to eat my map. Also interesting to note, they seem to have associated plastic bags with food. Because I had a grocery bag tied to my backpack, and one of the deer decided to play tug of war with it because he thought more crackers were inside. I was literally playing tug of war with a deer over a plastic bag.

If you ever want a hands-on deer experience, go to Nara. Just be careful where you keep your food.

Cory

Day 15 - Boy, you sure have gotten bigger!

Kamakura, a small city to the south of Tokyo, was once the capital of Japan. But you wouldn't be able to tell from looking at the place. In fact, I would say that it is the smallest city I've been to so far. I pretty much walked the length of it in an hour.

Nevertheless, it still has its claims to fame: an overload of shrines and temples, touristy shops, and arguably its most famous attraction, the Daibutsu (literally, "Great Buddha"). The Daibutsu is a bronze statue of Amida Buddha, a Buddha worshiped heavily in Japan. It stands somewhere on the order of  13 meters, which would be somewhere around 40 feet but I hate the metric system so I don't know the exact conversion. Sue me, I'm American.

Instead of me telling you how big it is, I'll just show you a picture.

I'm going to go with, "really really big"

It is noteworthy that the Kamakura Daibutsu is only the second most famous in Japan. The first being the Daibutsu in Nara. This colossal meditating statue used to be covered in a wooden pavilion in the typical Buddhist style, but hundreds of years ago, after rebuilding it again and again after earthquakes, fire, and tsunami, I imagine the priests agreed that maybe it was meant to sit outside. So it does. I think it gives it a great look set against the trees under the open sky, though.

The statue is also hollow, and you can go inside of it. Inside is a plaque describing how it was built and later reinforced. Since it is so large, it was cast in 30 stages, and the stages were sort of welded together using three types of joints which are all visible on the inside of the statue. After the Daibutsu was named a National Treasure, a steel girder was placed inside to reinforce the structure in case of an earthquake. It is green, like the Statue of Liberty, because of oxidation.

The actual city of Kamakura is a shopping city with traditional and tourist wares alike. The same tourist  t-shirts available everywhere are found here, but so are traditional 'Kamakura carvings'. I personally chose to stop in and try the local flavor of soft serve ice cream: Sweet Potato. 

I know it sounds gross. But in Japan sweet potatoes are seen as a dessert item, rather than the way we treat yams, as a side dish at turkey dinners. So, it makes perfect sense for them to make it an ice cream flavor. After all, they also have green tea flavored ice cream, and that isn't a dessert item. 

The sweet potato ice cream was surprisingly good.

On my walk back to the train station (Kamakura is about four hours from Osaka by train) I also went to the Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura. Hachiman worship is an interesting phenomenon in Japan. Initially, Hachiman was neither "Shinto" or Buddhist. It was its own form of worship which, if I remember correctly, came from outside the country. Could be wrong though, it might have developed domestically. 

Hachiman is the god of War, or more precisely, of warriors. He is often depicted with a bow and arrow, and he has become both a Shinto kami (god), and a bodhisattva (enlightened servant of the Buddha). So, he is worshiped under the auspices of both Shinto and Buddhist worship, which makes him something of an oddity.  At any rate, his shrine in Kamakura is architecturally magnificent.

I made it bigger so you could see more closely.

Look at more pictures.

And I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Cory

Day 14 - Festival

In historical Japan, rice was life. Lords paid their samurai in rice, Farmers were the second-highest social class, and the rice seedling was sacred. From this relationship with rice, various rituals developed to pray for the fertility and supply of rice crops. At Sumiyoshi Taisha, a shrine in southern Osaka, these rituals are preserved in the Otaue Festival, held on June 14th. I was lucky enough to be in town for this one, and it was certainly an event.

The entire festival takes place at the shrine, which contains a large circular rice paddy with a raised stage in the center. This is the primary locale of most of the ceremony. First, they till the paddy with an ox-drawn paddy plow. Today most farming is mechanized, but for the ceremony they use a traditional ox.

The ox figured out towards the end that the people were taking turns.

At the same time as this tilling is going on (can I call it tilling?), at the main shrine they hold a mock-imperial court complete with all sorts of period costumes. Samurai, courtly ladies, farmers, and children dressed as all sorts of things (from foot soldiers to noblewomen) took turns going before the "Emperor". When they were finished, there was a grand procession across the grounds of the shrine to the rice paddy. This was a parade of sorts, and this was where I got my best pictures.

The procession moved to the rice paddy, surrounded it, and then new ceremonies began. The farmers took their places in the paddy and began to plant rice seedlings across the entire width of it. This alone took almost 2 hours with the 20 or so farmers they had there. In the meantime, various groups from the procession took turns with rituals around the pit or on the pedestal in the center. The noble ladies danced around to a traditional Japanese song, the Head samurai sat on a stool and watched footsoldiers (the children) have mock-battles around the outside to the beat of his drum. Two women sang whilst girls dressed in medieval Japanese formal wear did a fertility dance around the ring. Various priests did prayers and rituals. And an old man went to the center and opened a giant umbrella, rhythmically striking the pole it was mounted on to give a beat while a different set of girls danced and slapped fans together that had bells attached to them. Meanwhile, the farmers kept planting the entire time, eventually filling the area of the pit, at which point the ceremony was over.

It was very cool to see all the kinds of traditional attire, much more fleshed out than the simple samurai/kimono wear that you see most of the time at 'traditional' events. You can see more examples in my gallery.

The shrine itself was also beautiful. It can be differentiated from the temples I've visited by the roofs, which are thatched rather than tiled, and they have the x-shaped brackets on top. Also, you will see ropes with white zig-zaggy tags around some objects. This denotes the objects as sacred. Trees and Rocks are commonly sanctified with these ropes.

On my way back, I stopped in the Minami district, or southern part of Osaka, known for its shopping. It mostly streets of shops filled with crowds of young Japanese. I personally didn't see that much difference between the South side of Osaka and the North area I toured before. However, there were more "red-light" areas in the southern half of Osaka. I also went into a pet store in the Minami district. Here, "Toy" dogs are the most common, and so the pet stores usually have fish-tank sized enclosures with really small puppies and kittens in them. They are always very cute, but I wonder where you could buy a larger dog in Japan.

Did I mention I biked all this way? Yeah, it was about twice as far as my trip to the aquarium, which was about 10 miles round trip. I definitely prefer biking to walking though, and the trains to the shrine were inconvenient. Biking also gave me the opportunity to see more of the city than if I just took a train.

After checking out the shopping area, I dropped into a noodle shop for some 200 yen (about $2.50) udon, which is a type of Japanese noodles. They're very thick (made of buckwheat) and served any number of ways. I just like them in a soup, but I threw in some crumbles made from fried batter to make it saltier. Also some soy sauce. Then I went down the street and bought an ice cream bar that is the best spin on an ice cream sandwich ever. First, its completely sealed so no worry about a mess. Inside was green tea flavored ice cream (one of my favorites), azuki (red bean jelly), and some white sauce stuff from hokkaido. I can't read the label so I don't know what it's made of, but it tastes like bananas.

I feel kind of very touristy taking pictures of my food, but I need to share this with somebody.

Cory

Day 13 - The Most often Mispronounced Japanese City

I chose a poor day to go to Hiroshima. It turns out that the Peace museum is quite a bit the school field trip you would think it is. Remember how I was interviewed in English by the boy at Kinkakuji? Well, today I was interviewed by more elementary school students. Five times. It was kind of creepy actually.

See, they were roving all over the park in herds looking for foreigners to interview for their English class, and well, I was the only foreigner, and I'm kind of easy to spot. I would hear running footsteps and sure enough swarms of elementary school children were sprinting towards me with "Hello!" pronounced in a Japanese accent. I would only make it thirty yards or so before another crowd would run up to me. For the record, My name is Cory, I come from America, and I like Football, Strawberries, and Udon. Those were the answers to the questions they asked me.

The museum (once I got to it) was an experience. It's the kind of thing that's even harder to describe in Japanese, because the Japanese word for 'interesting' (omoshiroi) also means 'fun'. And its never 'fun' to go to this kind of museum. They have in the park the remains of the only building left from the bombing. They call it the A-bomb Dome.

The museum itself was first a history of the buildup of WWII escalation in Japan and a historical outline of the events of the bomb, and then a collection of models and artifacts from the day the bomb was dropped. It went into great detail about how the bomb worked, so for example now I know the difference between a hydrogen bomb and an atomic bomb. 

The scale models were highly detailed, showing the before and after of the area around the museum, which is situated near the Hypocenter (the area directly below where the bomb was detonated mid-air). It also featured firsthand accounts of the day's events and a description about the lead up to the bombing. 

Something I didn't know: the elementary school children from a number of schools (about 6000 children) were evacuated out of the city in anticipation of conventional bombing raids and left their parents behind. This was a blessing and a curse. Yes, they survived, but they all became orphans.

It also clarified the narrative we learn in high school. It's never exactly what we learn in school, is it? But it was not as different as I imagined. First, the justification for using the atomic bomb on Japan. What we hear in school: we had to do it or we would be fighting a ground war in Japan from door to door and we would lose hundreds of thousands of soldiers. What I heard at Cornell: In fact, it was a show of force to decrease Soviet ambition in the postwar period through intimidation.

What I learned was that they are both partly true. Since the start of the Pacific War, the government here attempted to indoctrinate its residents that an honorable death was preferable to surrender. A PR campaign asked for 100,000 honorable deaths from the Japanese. It was working quite well, actually, as the US learned taking Okinawa. That was a very costly affair and it was only a small island of Japanese. So, had they attempted to take the mainland, it would have been very bloody.

But I also read letters today about strategy leading up to the bomb. Initially it was thought to be used against Germany, but since it was German technology that inspired it (it came from Einstein and his colleagues) they assumed that the Germans would learn too much if it was used on them. After it was decided to drop it on Japan (before we learned the ferocity of the Japanese at Okinawa), 17 cities were chosen and Nagasaki and Hiroshima were chosen because their topography would magnify the effects. So it was to be a show of force as well. This was also explicitly written in the letters that I read: that it would be effective in limiting the Soviet control of the region. 

I also learned that every nuclear test worldwide is sent a personal letter from Hiroshima's mayor asking them to stop and protesting the further development of nuclear weapons. The wish of the people of Hiroshima is a world without nuclear weapons. It makes sense, seeing as we could destroy the world many times over with the amount of power we have created. But at the same time I see why this can never be done. Because even if the US and Russia and all the nations of the world decommissioned every one of their nukes, there would always be lunatics like the Iranian president who want to wipe a place on Earth off the map. The only thing stopping these lunatics is fear of reprisal from a much larger force, and thats why as long as lunatics can have their own regimes, we can not completely eliminate our nuclear arsenal. Still, the vision that Hiroshima has for the future is a good one, if it could only be.

See more of my trip.

Cory

Day 12 - The Great Cake-scapade

I'm going to talk about today in reverse. That's because the last thing I did didn't have anything to do with Japan and so I want to get it out of the way. I think I mentioned yesterday how I was going to buy a cake to celebrate my friends' wedding. Well, I had to settle for cheesecake. I thought it would be best to get a real cake, being a wedding and all, and I really did try very hard, but to no avail.

I searched two supermarkets, three specialty bakeries, and a department store, and I could not find an honest-to-God cake. From this I can surmise one of two things: either there is a terrible cake shortage in Japan, or the Japanese just aren't that into cake.

"Not into cake?", you say. "How can anyone hate cake?"

Well, actually, I do. That's kind of why I'm not upset that I had to settle for its cheesier cousin. Nevertheless, it shows a cultural difference in how they view desserts. Cheesecakes were everywhere, as were these roll things where cake-like bread is rolled with some derivative of whipped cream and various sweets. Also you have your custards and your jellies, and I've already gone into the amazing pastries here. The common denominator I have noticed is fruit. And cake has no fruit. That must be why. Actually I have no idea why, this is just speculation.

Nevertheless, I got a cheesecake with berries baked into it to celebrate their wedding here in Japan.

mmm...cheesecake.

The other thing I did, the thing I did first, was visit the Fushimi-Inari Shrine in Kyoto, which scales a mountain. A common feature of Shinto Shrines is the Torii gate, as you have seen in my pictures before. Well, This particular shrine is known for its Torii gates.

lots and lots of torii gates.

The trails are literally lined with torii gates. It was a fair hike up to the fourth station, which has a small restaurant and ice cream shop, and that is as far as most people go. To which I say: I didn't come to Japan to do things half way. So I hiked for another hour and a half to get around the steep looping trail that went up to the topmost shrine on the mountain and back down again. At shrines all over the mountain, people would pray and ring the bell in the shrine and pay an offering. I was particularly amazed by the volume of the gates, as you can see from the picture above, there were hundreds. The numbers thinned somewhat as you go farther up the hill, but you can still see the stone bases that they were once planted on, indicating that age has taken a number of the gates from the hillside.

Also, there were statues of foxes all over the mountain, the symbol of the shrine. In the foxes' mouths they often are seen carrying small objects, sometimes keys. The keys, I have heard, are supposed to be for the grain shed. It is important to note that the numerous torii gates (the link is in the last paragraph if you missed it) are all donated. For a few thousand dollars you too can have your name carved on the back of a torii gate at the Fushimi-Inari-Taisha. This is probably because this shrine is celebrated as a place to pray at for greater wealth. 

I wish I had greater wealth.

Cory

Day 11 - I can only attribute it to magic

I ran into Matt and Sonya again today. This is the Matt and Sonya I met at Kinkakuji in Kyoto, remember? Well, I met them this time at Ueno station in Tokyo. Almost 300 miles away.

Let me explain how impossible it was. They were just passing through the station on their way to Starbucks, and I was passing through in a different direction to get pastries from a bakery. Even without that, realize that there are about 12 million people in Tokyo, and I happen to bump into the only two I have ever met before. Not only that, but I met them because the rain delayed my bullet train for 20 minutes. There is no way to plan this. I can't even begin to explain it.

I went to Tokyo today to visit the National Museum in Ueno Park. I also hopped over to Harajuku to stop by the Meiji Jingu--the place where Emperor Meiji is deified.

The first thing I passed in Ueno park was a statue of Saigo Takamori. He is known as the last real samurai, and the movie The Last Samurai is based on his final rebellion and death.

also he has a dog

The National Museum was incredible. They have a massive collection of Japanese and other Asian Artwork and artifacts. In fact, they can only display a portion of it at any one time, so the exhibitions always are changing. I was lucky enough to visit when they had a sword forged by the sword maker Masamune, one of the most famous in Japanese history.

They also had areas of Japanese pottery from all ages, and ancient archaeological finds. There was an entire building with artifacts found in the archives of a Buddhist temple. Many of the items are what Japan designates as Important Cultural Properties, or even National Treasures. I even saw a real Ming Vase. It was a good chance to see not only what Japan's history has left behind, but also to see what Japan designates as its important history.

In Harajuku, I saw a crowded shopping street full of Japanese youth and their interesting fashions. Also, this area is known for its Gothic and Cosplay (costume play) fashions, and so there were a few of those outfits around, too. Across the road from the shopping street is a massive park, in which was contained the Shrine Meiji Jingu. This shrine is one of the most popular in Japan, possibly because of its fame and its central location (being in Tokyo).  When I arrived a wedding was just finishing up, so I got the chance to see what Japanese wear at their weddings.

Which brings me to another important even that I am sadly going to miss. In about 2 hours from when I write this, two of my best friends will be getting married back in America. I want to say Congratulations and extend my apologies that I couldn't be there for the wedding, but I promise to celebrate it here. I think I might buy a cake.

I was going to go back to Tokyo tomorrow, but these long trips are killer. I think I'll stay a little closer to Osaka for a couple of days and return to Tokyo later in the week. You can check out the gallery, too.

Cory

Day 10 - Disappointment

I visited a few places today that aren't really on any tourists radar, but thats because today I was no tourist. Today I was a researcher.

As it turns out, being a researcher is a lot harder than they make it sound.

While today was not a complete failure, I didn't really get what I wanted to out of it. I started out this morning ready to go down to the local City College and find someone at the Department of Human Rights that spoke English. Yes, I do speak Japanese, but I am nowhere near the level of being able to understand field-specific vocabulary from sociology or complex issues such as discrimination. I don't even know the Japanese word for discrimination. The point is, I was concerned that even if I could ask the right questions in Japanese, receiving an answer in Japanese might obscure the useful information, because I could miss a word or not understand a sentence.

My first mishap today came from Japan's map confusion. What I mean is this: unlike in the United States, not all maps in Japan are oriented along a N-S line. This is really convenient when you are looking at a "You are here" map and it is oriented in the direction you are facing, but not so convenient when, because of the positioning of the map of the university campus, you in fact search for an hour on the wrong side of the railroad tracks. That was me today. When I finally found the place, I had to wait another hour for the only professor who was coming to his office today to come back (thank God he spoke English). During this hour I sat outside and read. It was the first time I had a chance to read, despite all the train travel. For the first time in my life, I'm more enthusiastic about sitting and watching the scenery go by than reading. Which is a good sign, as I have pretty much devoted my career to this country, I had better find it interesting.

When he finally got there, Noguchi-sensei was far from as helpful as I had hoped. This was how most of our exchanges went:

Noguchi-sensei: So what is it you want to learn here?
Me: I want to learn <insert specific question>
Noguchi-sensei: That's very interesting.

The man gave me literally no information about the subject I came to talk to him about. It was almost as if I wasn't worth his time. Perhaps he disliked speaking in English. Maybe he just doesn't like teaching. Either way the only things he did in my time there was to refer me to other sources, most of them books. He did let me go to their small library with really cool bookshelves.

hint: it's cool because they roll back and forth

Too bad for me all the interesting data that he showed me, which was an impressive collection of statistics about public opinion on Burakumin and other social issues from all over Japan, was all in Japanese. And not the kind I could read. There are 50,000 kanji (chinese characters) in Japanese. I have been studying kanji for less than three years (we didn't start right away with kanji). I know nowhere near enough to be able to read academic studies. So those were pretty useless. I did find four interesting books in English, however, but those I could probably have found in Cornell's library as well, and that was not why I came to Japan. All in all, Noguchi-sensei was pretty disappointing. 

He did give me one lead that I am thankful for. He told me the location of another research institute in Osaka that gives out an English newsletter, only it was halfway across town and it was already almost 2 o'clock by the time I finished getting no useful information whatsoever out of Noguchi-sensei. So by the time I got over there, and then searched and searched because his directions were wrong, everyone was going home for the night. 

At least I found the place. I will return there next business week when things resume at the center.

I needed a pick-me-up at this point, and it was starting to look like it might rain (it later did). I went across town to the Namba area and went to a place I had heard about. It's called the American Village, and it's a place where young Osakans go and experience a mythologized "America". It has a number of stores with American clothes, and the teens walk around in their American fashions.

...sort of.

There were also a number of fashions typical of Japan, like the maid-style seen above or brightly colored wigs. Or brightly colored hair. There were also gothic styles and teens with multiple piercings in their faces. It was a colorful view of Japan that I haven't had the chance to see yet. Also, among the shops was one of "gangster" style, which was run by a few black men. I think their story might be an interesting one. They probably get just as many looks as I do, if not more, when they aren't working. I'm not being racist, I'm just saying that Japan is not the most racially diverse part of the world. More pictures here.

Tomorrow I'm up bright and early to go to Tokyo!

Cory

Day 9 - Mythbusters Was Half Right

After four hours of travel, I finally made it to Iga-Ueno City, the home of the ninja. Ninja are a common image associated with Japan, but their image has been so mythologized that it is difficult to say what really existed and what didn't. Unless you have a ninja house.

The Iga-Ueno Ninja Museum does have a ninja house. In fact they picked one up out of the mountains and brought it to the center of the city to be their museum. The Iga area is famous for its ninja, if you didn't get that already, namely the Iga clan of ninja that competed with the Koga ninja as the two main schools of Ninjutsu in the Tokugawa era. The museum is dedicated to the truth of the ninja, rather than the mythology.

The first and most important myth they dispelled, at least for me, is one that showed up on Mythbusters. Sort of. A while ago, Mythbusters did an episode in which they tested a lot of ninja myths, one of which being that ninjas used flat wooden structures tied to their feet, or sometimes the end of a barrel, to walk across water. Mythbusters then went to show that the contraption would not allow you to walk across water.

Actually, that's not what it was meant for. In the time of the ninjas, even better than dry moats or water moats were mud moats, which didn't allow walking or swimming. But by using a flat piece of wood to distribute your weight you can walk across it. So these contraptions (Seen in the gallery here) actually did work, but as something other than what we believe they were. The house itself had a number of hidden features, like a spinning wall panel, a hidden spy room, a secret compartment outside on the porch for their valuables, a hidden compartment inside under a floorboard for a sword, and a secret passage.

Then there was the ninja show. It was about the coolest thing I've ever seen. They demonstrated the ninja's most common weapons and even did this:

In case you can't tell. He is throwing chopsticks--blunt-ended chopstics--at a wooden plank. And they are sticking into it. This guy was awesome.

I left something out, though. On my train ride to the Ninja museum, I met a Taiwanese couple from Texas and their two kids, the Lin family. We actually made quite a pair. They could read chinese characters (which I am dreadfully bad at) and I could translate spoken Japanese for them. I felt quite good about my language skills when I managed to translate the entire ninja show for them, because it was in Japanese. I basically leaned over and gave them the gist of what the guy had just said. I felt very useful.

And then, after riding part way back home with the Lin family, I was on the next train when a wasp started flying around. Fleeing the wasp, a girl with a suitcase sat down in my booth (the train had sets of two bench seats facing each other. I tried to tell her it wasn't going to sting her if she stopped panicking in Japanese, and when she found out I could speak Japanese, she wanted to talk. Minami-san was from the area near Kyoto that we were heading towards, and she goes to school in the Shiga area. Oddly enough, I told her I liked Japanese music and she said she really liked American music. But she doesn't speak English. And I don't really understand Japanese lyrics anyway. We did have the same taste in American music, but I was more impressed that I knew enough Japanese to keep up a conversation with a complete stranger for an entire train ride. It sort of validated the last three years of my life, in a way. It turns out I haven't been doing as bad as I thought I was.

Oh, so back to the Ninja museum (sorry I'm skipping around). After the ninja show was over, I walked the long way back through the city. It should be mentioned that I finally got to a more rural place in Japan. The train traveled through farmlands and small towns and Iga-Ueno is a small city about the size of Johnstown, a small city near where I live back home. I walked to the train station and on my way back, as a favor to someone back home, I stopped at a Fire Department to ask how they worked in Japan. I was lucky enough to catch the firefighters when they were outside. And They have a fake building in back to practice on.

complete with zipline entry

Here's what I found out. Even in small areas, they have full-time fire departments in Japan. These departments do enlist the help of Volunteers, but the volunteers do not have their own departments, as far as the man I spoke to knew. He was a career firefighter, so I trust him. He said that especially in big cities, its impossible for a fire department to know all the addresses in a crowded area, and so the volunteers help by navigating for the firefighters or cordoning off the area before they arrive. So, since they have full departments, they don't fund raise like ours does back home. It isn't too surprising, as I have family from the midwest who say that they don't have volunteer departments either. And this isn't to say there are no volunteer departments in Japan, just in this part of Japan. Although there's no way to tell for sure where one might be if they do exist.

When I met up with the Lins at the train station, they told me that it's like that in Taiwan, and their volunteers will sort of indicate the area of the fire for the fire trucks. 

I would have liked to stay a little longer and explore a smaller city a little more, but the trains run far apart in Iga-Ueno, and I had to get back.

Cory

Day 8 - Aquariums: They Aren't Just for Fish Anymore

I took a day off, today, as much as I dare to. Unfortunately, all the walking around Kyoto yesterday gave me two great big blisters on my feet. And my shoes are starting to break apart, but that's not so much of a problem. So today I chose a different mode of travel, and I rented the bicycle again.

I have recently learned that the going rate for a bike rental in Osaka is 500 yen a day (about $6.25). If you recall, my landlord rents to me at 100 yen a day. There are perks to having this tiny room with no windows, beyond the fact that its so cheap and I get a kitchen and a locker for my food.

First, I tried to stop in at the City University of Osaka to speak with a professor there doing research in Burakumin, but unfortunately the professor whose name I had from an article he had written no longer worked at that university. I will need to do some more research and try again.

Then, I biked across about 6 miles (one way) to get to the Osaka Aquarium. This aquarium is famous for its colossal central tank that is one of the few in the world large enough to hold a Whale Shark, the biggest fish in the world. They didn't have a full-grown one, which would be hard to fit in any tank, but I doubt many places in the world have a whale shark at all.

Now you can say you've seen a whale shark

The coolest part was that the aquarium also had semi-aquatic animals like Capybaras, Sea Lions, and Penguins. I arrived just at the right time--which, for reference, is 1 in the afternoon-- because in the hour and a half after I arrived there were feedings at 6 of the semi-aquatic tanks. I got a lot of great pictures, but some of the best material I have is in video form. I'll get back to you when I figure out how to share all of them, but here's one for now. 

It was a very fun trip, even if it was expensive. I really had to see the whale shark. I was glad though that it had more to offer than just that. It also has a temporary "cute" exhibit, with a number of smaller fish and a petting tank where you can pet a baby shark or a stingray. 

Following that, I biked the 6 miles back to where I live, but I did it without a map. It wasn't that I was forcing myself not to look at a map, but I recognized a bunch of landmarks, even though I took a different route back than I had taken out. It really showed me how much I have learned about this area of Osaka in just a week. On my way back, I stopped at a McDonald's, to see how different it was.

Well, the burgers are smaller and more expensive, and really I had better luck at another place (whose name I can't recall) with their bacon egg and cheese burger. It was delicious. But at McDonald's the entree menu looks about the same. But its not up on the walls. I originally thought, from looking through the window at a couple McDonald's', that there were only four choices you can have. Turns out they have the same number of value meals we have, but they don't put everything up on the wall behind them. It's instead on a menu on the counter when you order. I think that's a reflection of the differences in culture between here and home. Here, the number of choices matters less than at home, where everyone is obsessed with individuality. 

No, the entrees were not my favorite part of the Japanese McDonald's. Instead, they have a product that American McDonald's' don't have: the bacon potato pie. I won't go into any great detail, but its my new favorite food. Also, their apple pies are much better than ours, mostly due to the buttery, flaky, crispy crust that they have instead of our either soggy or hard, bread-like cinnamon crust. But the bacon and potato pie is really the best.

On my way back, I also stopped at a Japanese supermarket, and got what turned out to be a roll covered in sugar with chocolate chips just under the surface. It's really hit or miss with some of these Japanese foods until you eat them. It's because the labels are all hard to read. 

I also got this thing on a shish kebab. I'll let you know how it works out.

The gallery for today is in two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.

Cory