Typhoon Falls

One of the last events before I leave Japan, and a left over from last years to do list; the Nachi Fire festival took place last weekend..... Despite the Typhoon!

12 50kg torches were carried up and down the steps from the Nachi waterfall, as Sake was spat into the flames to make them rage. I got down as close as I could and had to retreat from the heat as they went by. You see more of it here. It happened to be the last long weekend we had before people began to head home, so Saturday night involved taking advantage of the fact the Kate and Lily's apartment building is completely empty but for them. Beaching and onsening on Sunday, follow by a far more subdued party that night involving Teams "The Game of Life" (There were three on our team, so of course we had to be the polygamist family) and chocolate cake. Then swimming at a beautiful, but Typhoon gorged waterfall the next day.

Why I re-contracted

It's an exageration, but only just. There were a couple of events and places in Japan that I missed in my first year, and I was determined not to let that happen again! This was one of them.

In all it's glory, The Kawasaki Penis Festival.

A little tired after getting back from Okinawa just the day before, but a bloody good day out.

In the morning, the giant Pink Penis is carried around the neighbourhood before being brought back to the Shrine where music and dancing rule the grounds as everyone eats and drinks under cherry blossoms in full bloom. I sounds fun and beautiful, and it was.

I've been told that some of the pictures might not be considered 'worksafe' a first glance, so Click here for more photos

As always, there's a good story behind the fesival. A young Japanee woman was invaded by a Demon who had the habit of biting off he genitals of her husbands on their wedding nights. No one was very happy with this situation, least of all the prospective bride and future and former husbands, so the town decided that firm action must be taken.

Enter the blacksmith. We can all see where this is going so I'll skip to the end. The demon broke it's teeth, fled the woman, and they all lived happily ever after.

Except for her former husbands that is...

They went on to form Japanese Teen sensation SMAP

Since then? The shrine became an area where ladies of the night would pray for protection from STIs. More recently, those ladies have been replacd by Tokyos LGB scene and couples praying for ferility, making the Festival a fun day out for all the family, with a fine touch of PRIDE.

It's raining (on) naked men!

Hallelujah!

Yes, saturday 17th February. It's bitterly cold. It's Okayama. That can only meanone thing: get very drunk and run around town naked (almost) with 5000 drunken japanese Salary men (office workers). Oh Joy! No, seriously, joy.

Getting there last year was an adventure in on itself, and Carlton's and my participation ended up being by chance. This year, there was some organisation. Aftr much cajolling, with most of the Jets in Wakayama going skiing that same weekend, I convinced three other lads and one lass to make the journey. Susanne drove and got very wet, while we ran around in a bunch in front of her, and got very hot. It was my camera most of the time, so I'm not in any of them. There are more here, where maybe I'm in the background

Last year, my only photo from the bevent was the one on the front cover of the next day's newspaper with me in the centre. There was no topping that this year, but still a hell of lot of fun! I let theb lads know that any attempt to actuaklkly get the agic stick itself would only lead to them getting betan by the 5000 others trying to grab it.

Only one person died this year, and thankfully no injuries on our parts.

I'm in there somewhere, on the left, well away form those danmed deadly stairs.

Setsubon

With no other plans, I spent the day hiking around Koya in the snow. On my way back through the town, I heard some chanting, and was gestured into a small side Temple by an old lady exiting.

It was the Setsubon, the Bean throwing, Holiday, and I had completely forgotten. One monk was offering prayers while another beat out a rhythm, as the fathful looked on.

Doya-Doya Festival


http://s114.photobucket.com/albums/n267/davidlmorrison/JapanAug2006toJul2007/OsakaDoyaDoyaSun14thJan07/

It's the Doyadoya (No idea what it means) Festival in the main shrine of Osaka. It's in one of those compounds that houses both Shinto and Buddhist buildings, where the Buddhist monks pray to the Shinto gods to protect their buildings, and vice-versa.

This willingness to take the foreign and adapt it to native needs is all over Japan, most notable in the use of foreign words within the Japanese language. Bread was introduced by the Portuguese, so it's "Pan". They didn't have a word for part time job, so they borrowed
the German "Arbeit". The list is endless, especially when it comes to things that can be described in English in far fewer syllables than in Japanese, even when there are Japanese words than could do the job.

Back on track. It's a Naked Man festival, in which men (high school boys in this case) wearing sumo nappies crowd into a temple and try to grab the good luck charms dropped by a priest from a platform above them. It's a daylight, less violent, less crowded version of the
Festival I took part in last February, the one where I'm visible in the newspaper clipping, and was hilarious to watch this time around.

ESPECIALLY when the participants screamed as ice cold water was poured over them. Here's the photo I submitted to the agencies to put on the wire.

And it was already bloody cold out to start with.

What's the German word for pleasure from someone else's pain? Schadenfreude, I think is how you spell it. Japanese entertainment, TV and Live, is all about the Schadenfreude.

New Year's Sa-ke

New Year's in Tokyo was.... interesting.

A big group of us went to Roppongi, which is infamous for being about as dodgy as Japan can get. Before we had even left the Metro station, we had come across the first of many DUMB AS SHIT Marines. How did you SURVIVE growing up? And then 10 metres from the station, I started hearing voices.

"Hashish-Hashish"

But no bodies to accompany them....

Not even very pale little Japanese boys wearing eyeliner, or little girls crawling out of wells.

"The Grudge" and "The Ring" being documentaries in their original Japanese form.

There was Mexican food (Tokyo having surprisingly few Japanese restaurants. Does Dublin have many “Irish” restaurants?), and dancing, and watching "dancing" and lots of laughing at other people's expense. And a bizarre set up on one floor whereby the men and women had to sit on separate couches, only there was no couch for the men.

Just as it ended, Erin and I left the rest and took a chance. We really wanted to see the fish market in Tokyo at it's busiest time, 5 to 7 a.m. Apparently the sight of Multi-Tonne Tuna being tossed through the air as people argue on price is well worth the lack of sleep. What a way to go, being decapitated by a flying dead Tuna. I'm sure it's happened. So we took the metro there, but, as expected, it was closed for the National Holiday. The restaurants weren't, so we had some of the BEST sashimi (raw fish) EVER. The monster feed was stunningly gorgeous, as was the Knife Master who was preparing it right in front of us.

Maybe he was just stunning.

Desert was provided by a Buddhist Temple we stumbled upon on the return to the station. We joined the crowd for the New Year's ceremony, and were poured a bowl of Sake at the end. It was just after sunrise, but it's very hard to say no to a guy on his 34,567th incarnation who has just blessed the unpleasantly early alcohol for you.

Completely knackered, there was another site I wanted to see.

New Year's is THE big holiday in Japan, and the first visit to a Shrine of the New Year is a grand occasion. We took the Metro to The Meiji Shrine

(First Emperor, and former father figure for the Japanese state, after Imperial rule was restored at the end of the 19th century; Hirohito's grandfather)

the most important Shrine (Shinto, not a Buddhist Temple) in Tokyo to see the first visitors of the New Year. Some wore Kimono, many were with their whole family, and all were deep in thought and prayer for a prosperous coming year.

The police were there just as crowd control at the front of the Shrine where people pray, but had to wear visors to protect them from the offerings being thrown at the Shrine.

A couple of days later, just before the Tokyo stock exchange opened, the Shrine to the god of business was the place to be.

Big Round Red Christmas

Erin lives about as far North of Tokyo as I live South of Osaka, so it was an easy journey to take. A bunch of us got together on Christmas Eve in one of her friend's houses and we found the temple to those little dolls whose left eye you paint before the New Year.

Daruma, the legendary founder of Shaolin King-Fu.

We think.

Going to the temple made us even more confused about whether you burn them or not, and if so, when. But we did meet a baseball team using the temple's steps for training, by which I mean running up and then falling down from exhaustion. Until they saw Ashlee, a blonde American with a camera. Then they came back to life,

some of them.
What made the day was the old man we met at the top. He's the reason we're even more confused about it. As he began to explain it: modelled on the legendary founder of Kung-Fu etc., he realised that he didn't actually have a clue himself!

This made us feel much better. If an old person in Japan doesn't understand or know something, thenit's not worth knowing. So goes the Gospel according to David. We walked down with him, and just before he drove off, he handed us a doll each! And then jumped in the car as a picture was attempted.

Legend of a man. Still not sure if I painted it properly....

The Emperor's New Birthday.

I took an overnight bus to Tokyo after work that Friday (22nd). Erin and I met the next morning to have a look at the Imperial Palace. The grounds are a massive walled enclosure that take up a big chuck of the centre of Tokyo, and normally the entirety of the grounds are closed to the public. They open twice a year, and one of those times, the Emperors Birthday, was that Saturday. So we arrive at on of the massive gates, and there is security everywhere. No barriers here, just lines and lines of police, sometimes with their arms linked.

Bit like a Céilí really.

X-ray machines, frisks, etc. And then we're allowed to get within 200m of the walls. BIG ASS STONE WALLS. Although they looked fun to climb.


Next comes the "not so secret" service. Towards the entrance gate, the crowd is funneled through a series of barriers, lined with men, and a tiny number of of equally severe looking women, all uniformly dressed in black trench coats, all with the eyes and a look that let you
know that they are taking in EVERYTHING. There's a lot of talk in Japan about security, but that's it, just talk. Their security is a joke, but in this case I think they were working on
the principle that they all knew what the three most wanted people in the country look like: two men and a women accused of involvement in the sarin gas attacks 10 years ago.

Still at large.

And standing right behind you.

Eventually inside the gates, and I realise that the grounds are not, in fact, open. Just a courtyard below a balcony surrounded by suspiciously thick glass... We're handed some crappy paper flags, and some old men start yelling "BANZAI!!!" when the Emperor and his family appear on the Balcony.


He looked like a Teddy Bear! This tiny old man with his sons towering over him (they've stepped backward above), taking in the crowd (old Japanese, and young foreigners, no young Japanese...) and thanking us for our Birthday wishes. Then, as quickly as it started, it was over and we were politely asked to
leave...release the hounds.


Ninja hounds.

So well trained in the arts that I couldn't even see them. But they were there...

I was disappointed. Not at the spectacle, that was all very interesting, but by the lack of crying. I wanted to see old men and women cry. Is that too much to ask?

http://s114.photobucket.com/albums/n267/davidlmorrison/JapanAug2006toJul2007/Christmas2006/

A bloody busy week
Part 1.

One of my sisters said something a few days ago about length of e-mails, so I'm going to try something with this overly long one. I'm going to spit it up.

This last weekend, I did nothing

And it was fabulous.

Although not technically true, I did do some grocery shopping, the rest was much needed. The previous week was bloody busy; which, yes, is how I like it.

It started off on the Wednesday of the previous week, with a night parade. The 15th of June marks the Birthday of Kukai, posthumously called Koba Daishi, the founder of my town, Koyasan, and of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism.

He's not dead, but in a state of deep meditation at the end of Okunoin cemetery, where our Birthday celebrations for him begin. He's a great guy all round, and still has monks bringing him
food each morning as well as changing his clothes every few months.

It may sound gross, but think about it: How often would you really need to change if you spent nearly your entire day in deep meditation?

The parades glowing floats glided through the town with the Conan-esque pushing of the local scouts and primary school students.

I followed them to the Great Gate, Daimon, chatting with different friends taking part, or the other JETs who had driven up to see it.

On the way back, I met an interesting young lady who was researching the commercialisation of the Kukai, and we serendipitously came across a friend's cafe that was open late for an impromptu session of freestyle music. We all stayed there until the small hours, and I listened
apprehensively as first Sonia, the Croatian nun, and then Dan, the private English teacher, were asked about their feelings on the commercialisation subject.

If you read his blog you'll already have a good idea of how awkward that could have been.

The next morning, I was tasked with pushing the large float of Kukai from the night before along with my students. The other students from the Junior Secondary School danced down the street, while my Primary school students did what they did best, made musical noise. The "rain" (drizzle at worst) terrified the monks into a phalanx formation of Umbrellas, and we marched through the town, using pikes to move braches away from Kukai's delicate paper-mache head.

It was another great opportunity for us to grab our festival gear and shout at people, and the pre-schoolers loved the chance to take over the road. And, as per usual in this country, the Oba-chan (Grannies) showed up everyone else taking part.

http://www.bebo.com/PhotoAlbum.jsp?PhotoAlbumId=1189188052

amities

david

"Veni, Vidi, Vomiti"