There are no rules

This week has served to very much do away with any lingering stereotypes I held about Japan. Are things smaller in Japan? Well their fire engines would suggest so:

And yet we find Ashidaka-gumo, and at 4-6" in diameter, with the legs, it is only about half grown. They are largely left alone though because they eat cockroaches and are "relocated" when found inside.

I also learned on Friday that not all Japanese people are polite and courteous, some can be rather pushy too, as was the case when Nick and I were practically abducted by one man on Friday and escorted to a Buddhist temple and told to take the tour (300 yen). It was a lesson in culture though even if he was a little gruff about it. I learned that when taking pictures of things here it is considered a little rude to not get the whole thing, and when walking down temple steps you should go slowly, whether this is a form of showing respect or merely tradition however I could not say. So it was that we ended up at Sofukuji Temple in Nagasaki, the first Buddhist temple I have been to since I arrived in Japan.

 This was a small shrine off to the side of the main temple, there were a few items on shelves inside, though they are impossible to make out because of the reflection of the glass in the picture.

 Note that even though this is a Zen Buddhist temple they still have Koma Inu guarding the gate

 This is a grave site, obviously though I can not read it to know whose it is.

A little wary we came to the main gate, we still were not sure why this man was so insistent that we go there, honestly if I did not know any Japanese I would have been scared of this guy, but despite his pushy nature he was still speaking politely. We did discover in the end he was friends with at least one of the people that worked there, and I suspect that with the recent Fukushima disaster and the decrease in tourism that temples and shrines (which rely largely on income from tourists for maintenance, even if they are historical sites per the government) are having a hard time.

 These are always an annoyance to me, because I know they contain historical information, but I can never read them and there is almost never a plaque explaining the content.

 The next few pictures are statues of various Buddhas. The thing to remember is that Buddhas are like Catholic Saints not like gods, so unlike Shinto, Buddhism will carve images of their Saints for temples. I do not however know who any of them are, though below there is a plaque briefly explaining some of the Buddhas in the main hall.

 I found this kind of impressive.

 I want to say that the two creatures on the right and left are Oni, guardians or Jugoku (hell), but in my understanding of Buddhism there is no such place, so this is perhaps an idea born out of exposure to Japanese culture?

 I assume this room is for meditation as Buddhists do not "pray" to the saints and have no gods.

With the two little guards nearby and the sign this nub of a tree seemed important, unfortunately the glare and image reflection off the plastic cover make it difficult to read in the picture.

 Even though you can not read the writing on the map you can see that there is a long line of temples on this road. This area was designated for the Chinese traders during the isolation period as an area where they could reside while in port. below is a shot from one of the other small temples we looked at. We would have looked around more, but at the time I needed to get something to eat, but I plan to go back and check it out later, probably on a nicer day though.

After getting lunch, sukiyaki udon (I never knew soup could taste this good), we headed out toward the wharf realizing that in our present direction nothing but houses existed if we continued on. What we did get a better look at was the Mistsubishi Shipyard. Though it is now closed this shipyard manufactured battle ships during World War II, and I've heard rumors that recently it was even used to construct submarines and torpedoes for the JSDF (Japanese Self Defense Force), this is however denied by the government.

 The middle of the three small destroyers (115) still has a cannon on it, whether it is operational or not I can not say.

 It is hard to see beyond the bridge, but there are some huge cranes out there, presumably for ship construction.

This was my Friday off. Today I am going to the school festival, which will be interesting because it is raining. It is supposed to rain all weekend and even most of next week, which will make things difficult in several regards, including laundry (it takes two days for things to hang dry inside). I will try to get some pictures of the festival this weekend though.

Movies, an unexpected event, and a Fish Festival

This weekend there was nothing huge planned, which suited me because I have a Japanese test in just over a week. However, the weekend was not all fun and games. My roommate went to the hospital on Saturday because it hurt to swallow food. He said it felt like something was stuck deep down in his throat. He is fine, but it was interesting because in Japan you go to the hospital for anything that is wrong with you. If you have a bad cold you go to the hospital, flu, hospital, sprained ankle, hospital. Obviously Daniel did not want to go to the hospital because in America we only go to one if we are dying or are seriously injured. That aside it turned out he had a stomach ulcer (not a serious one), but they decided to put him on an IV drip for two days so he did not have to eat and the ulcer could heal. The doctor will evaluate him today (Monday). I went to visit him on Sunday and he was fine, did not feel bad at all, but he was bored. He shares a room with six other beds, four of the five other beds are occupied and the TV by his bed requires a 1,000 yen card to turn it on, and we're not clear on how long the card remains valid for, so he just doesn't get one. There is also no internet in the hospital, wired or otherwise, for patient use. So he reads. I hope for his sake, and that of my host family, he can come home today. It is both interesting and sad to see how worried they are about the situation, not that I don't understand it, but I am not much for worrying about things I have no control over, so I almost feel a little bad that I'm not more involved in my concern, but I don't really see it as profitable to change that. Obviously with this happening there were no opportunities to sit down with the family and get pictures this weekend, but I will do it before I leave.
What I did do this weekend was go see my first Japanese movie: Dog X Police.

This is the Trailer if you're interested, though it is in Japanese

It was a decent movie about an officer transferred to a K-9 unit where he is reunited with a dog that he helped deliver a few years back. However, the dog, a white German Shepard named Shiro (Shiro (n.) is 'white' in Japanese), has a genetic condition and is thought to be unable to be a guard dog. This story of friendship and overcoming difficulties is set against the backdrop of a psycho who is blowing up buildings, and killing people in the process, because he was fired and hates his former boss. There is also a love interest for the main character who has some hardship in her past, but the details were lost on my inability to understand. That said however, I was able to understand quiet a bit of the movie and only failed to understand the finer plot points, this made me happy. The movie was also subtitled in Japanese for the hearing impaired, I know this because sound effects were also listed on screen. I do not know if this is common in all Japanese movies, only time will tell.
Movie theaters differ greatly in Japan, food is cheap, but drinks and tickets are expensive. I think the Japanese understand that if you buy food you will undoubtedly buy a drink as well and so they over charge more on the drinks and leave the price for food fairly reasonable. They also collect your garbage at the end of the show. The other interesting about the food is that there is a wide variety, you can even get caramel popcorn, a BBQ rib sandwich or potato wedges, they even have beer to drink. It feels more like a mini restaurant than a US theater.
Beyond food you select your seat when you buy your ticket, for which you use a terminal with a large touch screen, this has the upside of being able to stop by the theater in advance and buy a ticket for a later showing (the later the better, prices start dropping after 8 pm, though there are no showings after 10pm at the mall theaters) and then go about your business until your show starts seating knowing you will be seated where you want to be. Once the movie begins, no one talks or uses their cell phone for anything, these actions can get you ejected from the theater (this makes me so happy because I get to enjoy my movie without commentary or interruption from other people). Once the credits begin to roll talking is permissible in hushed tones (from what I observed), but the lights do not come up until the credits have finished, apparently in Japan it is bad manners to leave during the credits.
Sunday morning was a little rushed, I put my laundry in first thing (because it was the first sunny day in the last couple days, so it was a good day to dry clothes) and ate breakfast watching my normal Sunday morning lineup of Sentai and Kamen Rider. Then I got ready, skyped

 This is the stage were performances were, though at present it is being used for a fish auction

 A look at some of the festivities

 And more of the festivities

This is a Taiyaki stand where they make fish shaped pancakes filled with sweet bean paste.

This was a performance by some children using Taiko (Japanese drums)

There was also a place set up where kids could catch their own fish to take home (presumably to eat as they were a little large to be pets), I wish I had pictures from it, but I saw it on the news when I had gotten home that night. The water is covered with bubbles so it is hard to see. I had seen the bins earlier, but did not realize the purpose at the time. Other interesting things that happen include failing to get a ticket for the free sashimi tasting only to have a kind gentleman give me his ticket as he had two for separate events at the same time and decided to go to the other. While I was eating my sashimi, which was amazing, I was interviewed by a local news station. I don't know if I was actually on the news last night or not, but I'll get another chance to see tonight at 6pm. To my embarrassment I did botch a few particles as I was speaking, silly mistakes that I would not have made if I wasn't a little nervous, but it was fine overall and the lady interviewing me seemed to have no trouble understanding what I was saying. This is a short week for school as we have Friday off because Saturday and Sunday are the school festival, and we also have a Halloween party Sunday night, but since it is just for the JASIN students I haven't really decided if I am going to go or not yet, that and I don't really want to buy a costume to add to pointless things taking up my limited space, we'll see how it works out though.

Random information

There are just a few things that I wanted to share today. First apparently we were invited to play soccer last Wednesday, but our contact did not have her phone on, so we missed that day, not sure if they want to play today, I might go out and join the basketball club when my shoes get here since they're not so competitive and serious.
Also, I took this picture from our house (which I hope to get around to posting pictures of the house and my host family this weekend if we don't end up busy unexpectedly). It shows the Cocowalk Ferris wheel, and yes we are above it, which gives you an idea of how far above the valley area we are.

The other thing that was interesting today was finding a takoyaki Halloween special at one of the store in the Coccowalk food court, a huge box of 24 takoyaki for 1480 yen. Apparently it was meant for 3 people, but I managed to finish it, but I definitely have had my fill of takoyaki for a while, say at least a week or two.

School is going well and I think after a month I am finally settling into a routine. I feel less need to explore and am also starting to realize that I still have time to do things and do not need to cram it all into my first few months. I have also decided I need to be spending more of my free time absorbing and learning the language. It makes me sad every time a Japanese person at a store or food counter has to explain something in English because I don't understand it. Also my first Japanese test is coming up, but I will also be tested on things for the first 8 chapters of the book that were covered in Japanese 1, this means I need to go back and make sure I know all the words and sentence structures used that I did not learn elsewhere. This means I will be studying quite a bit this weekend, but since it it supposed to be raining this suits me. The weather has been real up and down, today it got up to 27 C even though it is still getting into the mid-teens at night. I'm hoping for a colder and more steady November. Like I said above though, I've adjusted, this is Japan, this is home, this is all normal. I haven't seen anything unusual in the last two weeks, I've just come to expect that things are the way that they are, and it's how I like them.

Unzen: Hell is in Japan

Before I get to my main topic today I wanted to back track to last weekend's Kunchi festival. After checking with my history teacher I learned that the shrines (those boxes on poles) that house the Shinto gods do not contain any type of carving, if anything they will contain a mirror to reflect the image of the god and items associated with, or pleasing to, the particular Shinto deity. The Japanese believe it is rather silly to make an image of a god with human hands. The three deities that reside at Suwa Jinja (shrine) are the Suwa deity of the Suwa household, which is an ancestral spirit (Shinto gods are either ancestral or natural spirits; there are something around the order of 80,000 Shinto kami (spirits/gods)), the other two are a spirit of water and a spirit of earth and fire.
Also, these are the "death bees" that we have here in Nagasaki:

It is about the size of my thumb and took two solid hits from a text book without dying. These wander in often when we open the windows... we've stopped opening the windows.
Shinto gods and death bees aside this last weekend we went to Unzen, a small town south of Nagasaki with nice hot springs, though they are sulfur springs so anytime you are around them you can smell it. Unlike many of my classmates I did not find the smell very strong, but then again my father has exposed me to some pretty serious stuff before as he's shown me geology.
The morning began early, we were supposed to catch a bus from Sumiyoshi and go up to the college where we would take a two hour bus ride to Unzen. However, this trip was combining the JASIN and NICS (Nagasaki International Communication Studies), which is comprised of students from other Asian countries, primarily Korea and China. It turned out they sent the smallest bus for us all, very poor planning on their part. We were told to walk since we did not get on the bus because we could not fit. Fortunately, Samuel, a French student with JASIN who speaks both Japanese and English beyond his native tongue, was able to get us a bus to the foot of the hill of our school. The walk up was easy, this hill was nothing compared to the slope I have to climb at least once a day to go home. Once we were there we received our room assignments and seat assignments for the trip down (the goal was to mix up JASIN and NICS students so they would talk, it worked a little, but since most of us only had Japanese as a common language there was quite a bit of silence too) and we were off. Here are some photos from the coast as we made our way down.

After two hours and a windy mountain road we came to the small town. Historically Unzen was used as a place of torture for Christians during the time of persecution at the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate. From what I've heard in my Japanese classes it was very painful and did not result in death meaning someone could be tortured for a very long time. That historical fact aside, it was raining, which many of us had anticipated, but there was nothing you could do about it and since the hot springs at the resort were our main interest it didn't dampen our spirits. We were given about 10 minutes to drop our stuff off in our amazing (and very traditional) room:

I loved that there were slippers in this bathroom, they are used because the floor of a bathroom is considered dirty, this is the first hotel/inn I've seen them at though, and the size is consistent with normal Japanese bathrooms, though most have more technologically advanced toilets.

After putting our stuff away we came down to the main hall for lunch.

 Yes we all use the "V" when taking photos, because it's Japan and that's what you do.

(note: this is not a peace sign)

The meals here were amazing, and dinner was especially good and beautiful too, however it wasn't long after this point that I donned my yukata (it's a light robe) and started relaxing. Before that however we headed up the mountain by bus. Some of us had planned to hike it despite the rain, but the weather was so bad once we reached the halfway point that we simply were not allowed to. Here are some pictures I did take while we were there.

 This should have been an amazing view, but alas the weather was against me.

 I did notice this Shinto shrine and stopped in to take pictures.

I apologize for not knowing what those little boxes that look like bird feeders are, Shinto is new to me and I am slowly learning about it in all my various classes.

After hiking failed we went back to town and looked around for a little bit. There were two rather large Komainu (guardian dogs) so I took some pictures. My roommate thought it would be funny to stick his hand in the "a" dog's mouth, I'm not really sure if that would be looked down on, but it was raining and no Japanese people were around to be offended if it was.

The next series of pictures were taken of the various Jigoku (hell) that were nearby. Obviously from the weather you can tell they were not all taken the same day.

 Literally translated these signs say "It is dangerous to enter hell."

 These two pictures are from a small pavilion on the hill, it has many protective seals plastered on the beams of the building, though I'm not sure what it is being protected from.

 Despite being used for the treatment of diabetes it did not cure me of mine. Though how it treats other types is of sudden interest to me.

 This particular "hell" is named for a woman named Oito. She had an affair and murdered her husband. She was executed and this spring erupted on nearly the same day, so it was named after her as a reminder to other people, what a thing to be remembered for.

With the sight seeing done I went back to my room and removed all of my possessions and put on my yukata and headed for the bath. Imagine a pool of hot water the size of a swimming pool and you'll have a pretty good idea of what was there. I showered off first and then climbed in. These springs were no particularly hot, but it builds after awhile. I spent nearly an hour and a half my first time in and was very dehydrated when I got out. There was also a private bath outside as well that was more like a hot tube. Bathing was interesting because it is done fully nude and with no privacy from the other bathers (though there are two bathes to divide the sexes), I had only bad memories from Jr High and High School with mass bathing, but it was nice to see that at our age it was not a big deal and after a minute or two I was completely relaxed and enjoying myself. I am sure you can understand why I do not have pictures from this.
After my first bath I went to my room and rehydrate before going down for dinner, which had so many courses that I almost did not finish it. But it was very good, very traditional, and beautiful to look at. I found a picture a friend took at the start of dinner, this does not show the added courses they brought after we started.

After dinner it was back into the bath and then up to my room. That was not the end of the night though, we ended up being up until about 3:30am hanging out and having fun.

From right to left: Someone in shorts, Daniel, Michelle, Dani, Jessica, Spencer, Yuya, Lucy, and Nick, the reason everyone was in our room to begin with (we went visiting people and took their stuff). We are wearing our yukatas.
After getting about 3 hours of sleep we were up again and back in the bathes one last time before getting breakfast and packing up. From there we headed out to a museum that records the disaster of Mt Unzen in 1991 (and in 1792), if you want more details you can find them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Unzen

 These photos show the actual volcano.

 This just made me think of my family for some reason...

 This shows one of the two pyroclastic flows that killed 43 people.

 This was the mud flow that buried many houses, shown below.

 The next couple pictures recreate the aftermath and show items recovered from the town.

 This was an interesting display made using paper crane in offering prayers for the people who died.

 The next several photos are houses that were buried in the mud flow. These are real houses.

After visiting the museum we loaded up in the buses and went home. The weekend was great and I enjoyed the hot springs, but the structure of the weekend left me with many things I was unable to explore and left me feeling a little hurried on Sunday, still it was a nice experience to have and I am glad to have had the opportunity.