Sunday, July 26, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Miyajima
With only a week of living in Japan left, I figured I should go do something cool, and since I hadn't yet been to see Miyajima, that became the goal. Miyajima is an island off the coast of Hiroshima (actually part of the city, I think) that is one of the three great sites in Japan, the other two being Kyoto's Ama no Hashidate (kind of far away) and Miyagi prefecture's Matsushima (really far away). Joining me on this trip and thankfully handling pretty much all the details, faithful friend Mie, seen here riding on a boat.
Our journey started at the local train station, but didn't really start getting update-worthy until we got to Hiroshima. Hiroshima still has streetcars, so we took one of those for the sake of taking one (it wasn't that far) to the peace park. I already posted a bunch of crap about that, and we didn't spend any real time there, so there aren't going to be any pictures of that. From the park, though, one can take a boat down the river and out to Miyajima, which we did.
You can see the atomic dome there. While the boat is on the river, you can stand on the deck outside, which we obviously did, but once you get to the ocean, you have to go back inside and they speed up, the boat bouncing around like crazy. While we were taking pictures and whatnot, a guy offered to take a picture of the two of us, which I don't have because it was with Mie's camera. Mie offered to take a picture of him and his friend, and so I tried to get out of the way, but they thought it was funny and took a picture with me, too. I also don't have that picture.
This is what Miyajima is famous for, its shrine. The actual name of the island is Itsukushima (厳島), and Miyajima (宮島) just means "shrine island." For those paying attention to the characters, shima (島) means island. The unvoiced palatal sibilant sh is voiced as an affricate, j, sometimes due to the preceding sounds. It is odd because usually the change is only in the voicing, but here the actual type of sound changes. If you left it as a fricative (sibilant), then you would get the zh sound, like the j in the French je. That sound doesn't exist in Japanese, however. Anyway, this is the torii, which looks like this at high tide. When the tide is out, you can walk out to it, which we did, but I don't have any pictures of. The tide was out when we got there and we had to wait a while, actually, before we got this. There were some Americans who tried to swim out to it, but they got yelled at by some priest or something. There's a boat that takes you through the gate, actually, if you want to. Prepare for a multimedia experience.
I was saying "Amerikajin da" meaning "[I am/They are/etc.] American[s]." I don't know what we were talking about, so I don't know what the topic of the sentence was. Japanese is high-context.
That's the other thing that Miyajima is famous for, obnoxious sacred deer that try to steal your food or anything they think is food. You are not supposed to feed them, unlike the deer in Nara, though I suspect that people do, anyway. That deer ended up eating that map, but we didn't need it anyway.
There are lots of deer. I have no idea who that other dude is; he just happened to be there.
We went into the main building of the shrine (this costs a small fee), and were lucky enough to see somebody's wedding ceremony. I tried to take a couple pictures, but they aren't very good.
Ah, well. We also did omikuji, which is a kind of fortune telling where you shake a box to get a stick out, and the stick has a number on it. Then you take a fortune out of the drawer with the same number. I got kyou, 狂, which is the worst one. That basically never happens at shrines because they want people to do it more, which they are unlikely to do if it says they are going to get sick or lose their job or something.
We also saw this big pagoda. Not much to say about that. After all that walking around, etc., it was time to take a break (I love this about Japan; it is almost always break time). On a hot day, what makes for a good meal?
Tempura soba! The long tempura is anago, conger eel. Soba is buckwheat noodles. I wanted cold noodles, so this hit the spot nicely.
After lunch, it was time to make our way up Mt. Misen. On the way there were stores selling normal touristy stuff, which in Japan usually includes wooden statues. I don't know who buys giant wooden statues, but they usually have big ones like this:
I'm pretty sure the one on the right is Yebisu, who appears on some of my favorite beer.
The first segment of the climb is done via a "ropeway."
Don't look down, Mie!
Living on the mountain are Japanese macaques. There are a bunch of signs saying not to feed them and not to look at them in the eyes. Also, there are lockers to put your stuff in because apparently they are good at stealing things. When we were coming down the mountain, a couple of them came flying down the path towards me, howling. It was crazy. They were fighting, though, and didn't do anything to me.
I think this was about halfway up?
Most of the way up there is this little shrine building. Mie's doing the classic Japanese pose. We were covered in sweat by this point from trying to climb up the mountain. It isn't that steep, but it was so humid that none of the sweat would evaporate until she found a passage behind the building here that acted as a wind tunnel where we stood to cool off. There were French dudes who were climbing the mountain in sandals (what?).
Even further up the mountain, a little passage between rocks.
Not a very good picture, but from the top you can see the Seto inland sea, on a clear day, all the way over to Shikoku.
お疲れ様、美絵ちゃん！We did make it all the way to the top, where there is a little lookout building, from which you can see 360 degrees of inland sea.
On the way back down, we saw a monkey picking bugs off a deer. Mutualism at work.
And Mie's real goal, green tea flavored ice with sweet bean paste.
And my real goal, delicious Kirin stout. We had drinks with oysters, since they are a local specialty. 御馳走様でした！
Our journey started at the local train station, but didn't really start getting update-worthy until we got to Hiroshima. Hiroshima still has streetcars, so we took one of those for the sake of taking one (it wasn't that far) to the peace park. I already posted a bunch of crap about that, and we didn't spend any real time there, so there aren't going to be any pictures of that. From the park, though, one can take a boat down the river and out to Miyajima, which we did.
You can see the atomic dome there. While the boat is on the river, you can stand on the deck outside, which we obviously did, but once you get to the ocean, you have to go back inside and they speed up, the boat bouncing around like crazy. While we were taking pictures and whatnot, a guy offered to take a picture of the two of us, which I don't have because it was with Mie's camera. Mie offered to take a picture of him and his friend, and so I tried to get out of the way, but they thought it was funny and took a picture with me, too. I also don't have that picture.
This is what Miyajima is famous for, its shrine. The actual name of the island is Itsukushima (厳島), and Miyajima (宮島) just means "shrine island." For those paying attention to the characters, shima (島) means island. The unvoiced palatal sibilant sh is voiced as an affricate, j, sometimes due to the preceding sounds. It is odd because usually the change is only in the voicing, but here the actual type of sound changes. If you left it as a fricative (sibilant), then you would get the zh sound, like the j in the French je. That sound doesn't exist in Japanese, however. Anyway, this is the torii, which looks like this at high tide. When the tide is out, you can walk out to it, which we did, but I don't have any pictures of. The tide was out when we got there and we had to wait a while, actually, before we got this. There were some Americans who tried to swim out to it, but they got yelled at by some priest or something. There's a boat that takes you through the gate, actually, if you want to. Prepare for a multimedia experience.
I was saying "Amerikajin da" meaning "[I am/They are/etc.] American[s]." I don't know what we were talking about, so I don't know what the topic of the sentence was. Japanese is high-context.
That's the other thing that Miyajima is famous for, obnoxious sacred deer that try to steal your food or anything they think is food. You are not supposed to feed them, unlike the deer in Nara, though I suspect that people do, anyway. That deer ended up eating that map, but we didn't need it anyway.
There are lots of deer. I have no idea who that other dude is; he just happened to be there.
We went into the main building of the shrine (this costs a small fee), and were lucky enough to see somebody's wedding ceremony. I tried to take a couple pictures, but they aren't very good.
Ah, well. We also did omikuji, which is a kind of fortune telling where you shake a box to get a stick out, and the stick has a number on it. Then you take a fortune out of the drawer with the same number. I got kyou, 狂, which is the worst one. That basically never happens at shrines because they want people to do it more, which they are unlikely to do if it says they are going to get sick or lose their job or something.
We also saw this big pagoda. Not much to say about that. After all that walking around, etc., it was time to take a break (I love this about Japan; it is almost always break time). On a hot day, what makes for a good meal?Tempura soba! The long tempura is anago, conger eel. Soba is buckwheat noodles. I wanted cold noodles, so this hit the spot nicely.
After lunch, it was time to make our way up Mt. Misen. On the way there were stores selling normal touristy stuff, which in Japan usually includes wooden statues. I don't know who buys giant wooden statues, but they usually have big ones like this:
I'm pretty sure the one on the right is Yebisu, who appears on some of my favorite beer.
The first segment of the climb is done via a "ropeway."Don't look down, Mie!Living on the mountain are Japanese macaques. There are a bunch of signs saying not to feed them and not to look at them in the eyes. Also, there are lockers to put your stuff in because apparently they are good at stealing things. When we were coming down the mountain, a couple of them came flying down the path towards me, howling. It was crazy. They were fighting, though, and didn't do anything to me.I think this was about halfway up?Most of the way up there is this little shrine building. Mie's doing the classic Japanese pose. We were covered in sweat by this point from trying to climb up the mountain. It isn't that steep, but it was so humid that none of the sweat would evaporate until she found a passage behind the building here that acted as a wind tunnel where we stood to cool off. There were French dudes who were climbing the mountain in sandals (what?).
Even further up the mountain, a little passage between rocks.
Not a very good picture, but from the top you can see the Seto inland sea, on a clear day, all the way over to Shikoku.お疲れ様、美絵ちゃん！We did make it all the way to the top, where there is a little lookout building, from which you can see 360 degrees of inland sea.
On the way back down, we saw a monkey picking bugs off a deer. Mutualism at work.And Mie's real goal, green tea flavored ice with sweet bean paste.
And my real goal, delicious Kirin stout. We had drinks with oysters, since they are a local specialty. 御馳走様でした！
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Tarantula
I've just started reading Tarantula, a collection of poems by Bob Dylan from his psychedelic period. A wonderful friend sent me it. It is fantastic.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Bubble
What is this John and Kate thing? I have no idea actually. From what I can gather it is some sort of tv show about kids or people with kids or something. People keep referencing it on shows that I actually watch and there are news stories or opinion pieces or whatever about it that I don't read but see on news websites. I could just google search, I'm sure, but I actually don't want to know. One of the little known benefits of living overseas is that the effort it takes to stay in contact with the US makes you basically immune to whatever stupid culture stuff is going on there. Also, the effort of trying to figure out Japanese tv, etc., makes you basically immune to the stupid stuff here, too. It's fantastic and I'm going to miss the ease with which one can live in a bubble, protected from all the stupid, here. Actually, nobody tell me what it is because I don't want to know.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Eat, Drink, etc.
Check it out. New Fanta Cider, which is zero calories and somehow reminds me of Red Flash even though the taste is totally different. And, Pepsi Shiso! A good way to leave Japan since I apparently just missed Cucumber Pepsi on the way here. Shiso is some kind of leaf that appears in Japanese food. This was rockin' good. I basically never drink soda, so this was kind of weird, but I couldn't resist something green to drink. It's quite the opposite of ma, I guess.
Coffee-flavored jelly that you are supposed to drink. I don't know how, since I had to scoop it out of the bottle. This was part of my juice or not juice quiz for my English conversation class. Juice, or juusu, is a loanword into Japanese, but it's used for all sorts of non-juice things, so I was testing my students to see if they could tell what qualifies as juice in English. The answer is not really, but I expected that. Everyone here is surprised to hear that Calpis is not what an English speaker would consider juice.
New beer! Quoting, Kirin's KOKU NO JIKAN delivers you a great harmony of refreshing and full body taste.
Probably I already posted this, but that's actually donkey meat. Thanks, Italy.
Those last couple of pictures are dark because the light in my bedroom has been broken for a couple months, but the electrician just replaced it today at (hopefully) the taxpayers' expense.
Tonight I ran into the same little kid at the convenience store, and he again gave me a great recommendation on snacks, this time some rice crackers. Some other kids showed me the stag beetles they had just bought. This place is great.
Last but not least, congrats to Rayfro on his upcoming marriage.
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