I Get Up to Noh Good

Back from hiatus (well, if three days counts as a hiatus) since all my in-class presentations and the "first semester" exam is over and done with (results still pending). Now we get a 3.5 day break, 1.5 days of which are already over...where does all the time go?! Regardless, today I did a variety of interesting cultural things.

Even thought it was a break day, I woke up at the same time I usually do and caught the same bus I usually do, but instead of getting off at Rifare I got off at a stop called Minamicho to visit Oyama Jinja, a large and popular shinto shrine in the downtown Kanazawa area.

The large benefit of being there at 8:45 in the morning was that there was essentially no one there. A shrine maiden was sweeping the stone pathway, a priest was kneeling inside the temple, and someone was praying at one of the shrines inside the complex, but in general all was quiet. I drew an omikuji (fortune telling) from the main shrine and got good fortune! And a small charm with the character for happiness on it that I (think) am supposed to carry around with me?

Then I walked to Rifare and just hung about until 12:15 when I took a bus with three other PII students to Kanazawa University, where I was getting to visit a class on French history. Expecting a large lecture, the other student and I were surprised to walk in and find that it was a seminar class; even more surprised to realize that there were only three other students in it.

The class was conducted in a mix of Japanese and French, most of both of which I understood. He handed us a copy from the French history book they were using and I'm relieved to say I still understood pretty much all of it. Speaking on the other hand...whooosh that's all gone.

The other student (Arlia) and I took a bus back to the Kenrokuen area, and since we had time we went into the Kanzawa Noh Museum since it was free with our cultural passes. There, we got to try on traditional noh garb (i.e. a kimono) and masks.

The mask is essentially impossible to see in...you're allowed one tiny pin of light to see through. And the kimono is heavy and constricting. The fact that noh actors are able to move confidently and with grace impresses me to no end...

And tomorrow there will be more exciting things I'm sure...

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Enoshima: The Heavenly Maiden and the Dragon

This past Monday was a national holiday -- Mountain Day -- so, of course, Troy and I headed to the beach instead. Well, to an island near a beach since (as some of you may know) I'm not exactly the beach-going type. Plus I'd just climbed Mount Fuji, which was more than enough mountain for me. Enoshima is a small island off the coast of Kanagawa Prefecture, fairly near Kamakura. It's connected to the mainland via a bridge, so you can just stroll on over from the train station. The entire island is dedicated to Benzaitan, the goddess of everything that flows -- time, water, speech, music, and knowledge. According to the "Enoshima Engi," (a history of the shrines and temples on Enoshima) there's also a legend associated with the creation of the island involving Benzaitan and a dragon. In brief, the area around Enoshima was once wracked by violent storms and earthquakes. Eventually the tumult ended and a heavenly maiden (Benzaitan) descended from the clouds....

Homecoming

This is it. It's Friday, February 3rd and in less than 24 hours I will leave this house for Tokyo train station, which will take me to the airport, which will take me...home. Most of this week has been taken up with goodbyes: to schoolmates and teachers, and later, close friends. There were tears involved. I think the photos will do it a lot more justice than I could: Kohei, from tennis group. All the tennis people got together for dinner at an okonomiyaki (think cabbage pancake, with yummy stuff like shrimp in it) but first we went to a boardwalk which had nighttime light shows. Top: Anime Club. They threw a small party for me, where we ate lots of food and watched (what else) anime and talked. Bottom: one of my English classes. They asked me to teach them an American game for the last day, so I taught everyone how to play Heads-Up 7-Up. They were pretty good at it. The other exchange student, Nom, and my Japanese teacher. The last view of school: the walk leading u...

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As some of you may have known, this past weekend Typhoon Hagibis blew through Japan, specifically the Kanto region where Tokyo is. It had the grim distinction of being the strongest/most deadly storm to hit the region since Typhoon Ida in 1958. Typhoon classification scales are confusing (and, interestingly, the only difference between a "typhoon" and a "hurricane" is the naming convention of the region in which it occurs ), but at one point Hagibis was classified as a "violent typhoon," the strongest category the Japan Meteorological Agency has, roughly the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. Fortunately it didn't make landfall at that strength, downgrading to a Category 3 equivalent storm. Personally, although Typhoon Hagibis (which means, appropriately, "speed" in Tagalog) was not the first typhoon I've (pardon the pun) weathered here in Japan, it was most certainly the most extreme. Most typhoons don't directly hit Kanto, inst...

Rice and Ramen

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