It’s summer vacation! Which means I’m going to spend the next few weeks catching up on everything in school. Lots and lots of studying. Yay!

My friend up in Hokkaido suggested I flee up there for a few days over the summer but I don’t even have cash for that, though it was very tempting.

I did go to Lake Biwa before with the school for a barbecue/swimming party thing. I paid 1500 yen to tag along for “food and drinks” and ended up getting four-five tiny pieces of probably-not-thoroughly-grilled meat and two beers. With 40 people going and 2 fires (tiny, weak fires — Japanese don’t seem to know how to make fires), and one retarded little man who brought his own meat and taking up one fifth of one of those two, it was more or less just a matter of standing around like a retard or giving up, and I don’t like looking like a retard.

Hope everyone else is having a good summer (too).

I must say the spam out there is getting more and more sophisticated. The whole “this forum” talk of course tipped me off immediately, but still.

This was a comment on my “Cellphone posting in WordPress” post on this blog. I’ve, of course, removed the spam links since I don’t want to contribute to spam:

“Hi everybody
Here’s my first thread on this forum .

I just recently purchased a LG cellphone, and now I need to get some hip hop ring tones for it.

Problem is, I am unsure where to start. There are so many ringtones sites out there and a lot of them come across as rip-offs. How will I know my creditcard won’t be charged for something I don’t want? Is it hassle-free to cancel these services? All I really want is to download some free ringtones.

I’m even willing to pay for some ringtones if the service is good. (removed link) appears to be trustworthy but I have never heard of them. Any tips are appreciated. Also, if anyone know of a trick to save MP3s to ringtones, let me know.

Greetings,
Nikolas”

So…! Yesterday around 1 am, as I am about to slither into bed, my doorbell rings. About 5,000 times consecutively. I figure it’s important so I walk outside and tada, my neighbors are enjoying the company of a new friend come to visit.

That’s a Rhinoceros beetle, or Kabuto-mushi as they’re called here. They’re completely harmless (or at least this guy was), and in fact as my neighbor put it, “It’s like a miniature dog!”.

Honestly, it was. I fell in love with that guy. Apparently Kim (my neighbor) opened his door and this guy came flying through the air, landing with a little thud on the wall right next to Kim’s door. When I came out, he was just lumbering about on Kim’s arm, seeming unaffected by all the people around him. We petted him, even on his little horns, and he didn’t try to escape or anything. We kept saying we wanted to keep him but we didn’t have grass or stuff to keep him happy, so eventually he just decided that he’d been socializing with us Swedes enough, and he took off and zoomed away.

Well, he attempted to but ended up landing with a little thud on the wall of the apartments above ours. We walked up and Kim tried to grab him from the wall but he had had enough of us and wouldn’t let go, so we figured it was time to go our separate ways…

Japanese kids have been buying these insects, raising them and even having them wrestle each other — in fact, throughout Asia, gambling takes place where two Rhino beetles try to toss each other outside of a ring (Beetle sumo), there’s even a world championship here in Japan, much to the disdainful amusement of some.

I’ve always been so confused about this whole Beetle fetish thing until now. Now I want one of my own! Insanity. But fuck, that li’l guy was so cool! Honestly. Like a micro-dog.

Rico (another neighbor) with a real camera took a bunch of pictures of the li’l guy. If you yearn to see Rhino-san with, you know, focus and stuff, let me know and I’ll snatch pictures from Rico and put them up here.

On the 17th of July, I skipped school to go see the parade-thing for the Gion festival. There was a fuckload of people, but not as bad as it usually is, or so they tell me.

By the way, I realized that maybe it makes more sense to write text about a picture above the picture, rather than below it. I’m still sort of torn on this one, but I’m gonna give it a shot. Here’s The New Me!

As you can see below, the car lanes were empty of cars. And people. Except those who were a part of the festival. We regular folks were standing on the opposing sides watching. From what I saw on TV, I thought everyone was just running around in a big mass of people helping out carrying the things, but that might have been some other festival. Anyways…

Each one of these things came with a troupe of people doing things. In fact, the big carriages (hokos) had loads of people. What you see below is the very first hoko, Naginataboko (長刀鉾). The guy holding the big banner has the name of the float/carriage written on the banner. Each hoko had a “flag-carrier” like this.

As you see below, these things required a lot of people to move! (This is the same hoko as above.) The people are wearing rather traditional clothing as you can see, and there was a feeling that each float and its people were a group on its own, slightly apart from the others. Every group seemed to have its own style, both on the outside, clothing and decorations, and on the inside, in how they behaved and acted.

As you can see below, a lot of people are sitting in, and on, the hoko as it is being pulled. Unfortunately I didn’t catch it (too far away), but if you look at the center of the “balcony”, there’s a little boy sitting there in very elaborate garbs.

At the beginning of the festival, there was this white rope hanging across the road, crossing the path for the hoko. The float was pulled up close to the rope, after which the little boy pulled out a katana and cut the rope, allowing the hoko passage. Pretty cool, but I couldn’t really see anything from where I was standing.

Standing at the front, you can see two guys dressed in white, leaning outwards holding a rope. These guys were directing the hokos, sort of. They had this really cool series of movements involving fans to tell the pullers to start pulling and stuff.

Naginataboko, from the behind. The detail put into these things is unbelievable.

There were a lot of kids involved in the festival. I was worried they’d succumb to the heat, but they seemed fine.

Number 2 out of 32 — Mousouyama (孟宗山)! (No, I didn’t take pictures of every one of them! In fact, I didn’t even see all of them.)

Mousouyama, the actual float, not just the flag this time.

As you can see, the “feeling” of this one is completely different from the other ones. Those carpets or whatever they are, sure look sweet.

Number 5, Kankoboko (函谷鉾). Magnificent piece.

A lot of music — or, sounds — were involved in the Gion festival. In fact, stores all over Kyoto (not only the city but the suburbs as well) played Gion festival “drum-recordings” in the speakers inside the food stores. To remind people of the festival, perhaps. Or maybe just to liven up the day. The float-inhabitants, or however you wanna call them, were into music too. In the picture below, a bunch of people are playing flutes. I adore their tails. You just wanna jump out and grab one and pull.

Two words — “cool dragon”. I would really like to have that tapestry for my birthday.

Okay, that’s quite tall.

My mom (and some of the Skotos people, I bet) would kill baby seals to get her hands on some of these clothes. She’s a drama teacher. What else can I say?

Same one, from the behind.

If you read the previous post (Gion part 1) I mentioned that some of the big floats weren’t “big” per se, just different from all the others. There’s one particular one with dancers. The float itself is small, but the dancing makes it a hoko anyway. Below is the “main” dancer, from what I can tell. I love his outfit. His dance was pretty cool too.

These guys were a part of the dancing hoko as well.

We actually made a movie of the dance, but I won’t upload that here.

Anyway, this is a selection of the pictures I took. If I’d had a real camera I’d have gotten more and better. I’ll get one before the next big festival I attend.

The end!

I occasionally read about how other people do stuff, such as experience traditional Japanese tea ceremonies or wander the Russian steppes or eat Big Momma’s sweet potato pie or, you know, stuff that you think people might be interested in hearing about. Sometimes when I hear these kinds of stories or see the pictures they took, I think to myself “are they just happy they did something, or did they actually find it interesting?” “Did the excitement and anticipation they held before they went ‘lift them’ through it, or did the contents affect them in a meaningful way?” These are perhaps odd questions to think about, but I can’t help wondering sometimes.

You know, you go somewhere, visit some place, you think it’s quite the deal, and then you tell people, they get all “oh man I wish I’d been there”-blue, and so on. But did you really, honestly enjoy the show, or did you just think it was cool to have done it? Sometimes I end up realizing, long after the fact, that I didn’t really get much out of some event or thing that I experienced and was all excited about at the time. The Gion festival was not, however, one of those times.

To some people that I know, it wasn’t all that interesting. To me, it told an indefinite, unending tale about a past so well preserved that we of the West could only marvel at a single shred of scrap from one of these things, were it dug out from its many centuries of hiding beneath the earth. A thousand years of history preserved and protected and even, today, the tradition, although changed, no doubt, is still upheld and honored.

It was as frightening to me to see the dedication and devotion and homage these people displayed as it was inspiring. As 30-40 people were pulling, by hand, one of these huge vehicles past you on the street, there was no being unaffected. The grinding and squeaking of the enormous wheels whipped your consciousness to life. This was no game. Not solely a game, anyway. But enough of that (or rather, more of that later)….

The Gion festival is named after a district of Kyoto, and is said to have originated as part of a purification ritual over a thousand years ago. I’d tell you all about how that came to be, but I think Wikipedia does a better job, especially since I know nearly nothing.

Yes, that is me. And yes, my hair looks a little odd right now. I’m working on it. More importantly, I’m wearing a yukata.

It was definitely an interesting week, though. During the evenings of 15th-17th of July, the streets where the festival was to take place (mainly Shijou-Kawaramachi and the surrounding streets) were turned into pedestrian streets (no cars). According to my girlfriend there weren’t a lot of people this year, but to me, it was like a living wall of flesh. Scary stuff. I hope it stays ‘not a lot of people’ the next year too, or earth might tilt over due to the excessive weight of human matter in one concentrated place.

This is the morning of July 17th, right before 9 am. “Not a lot of people.” (It actually wasn’t that bad… in front of us. Whenever I turned around I saw naught but humanity.)

The culmination of the festival was 9 am on 17th of July, where a number of differently shaped and sized carriages (32 of them, to be exact) were carried/dragged through the streets by people dressed in traditional attire. These carriages were classified as either yamas (”mountains”) or hokos (”spears”), where, generally speaking, the yamas are smaller than the hokos (sounds a little tilted, I know), or in some cases, the hokos were simply unique enough to be considered hokos, rather than yamas. Some of those carriages were huge, though. You can’t help feeling awed by the pure energy behind the moving of those monstrosities, which was of course done exactly as it was done a thousand years ago.

Fune Hoko, one of my faves (look at that birdie, so damn cool!), on the eve of July 15th; the yamas and hokos were spread out throughout the city the days prior to the actual pulling them around, and a part of the festival was to go around and look at them, even enter them. The above hoko is shaped like a ship, and is called Fune Hoko (船鉾), which simply means “Ship Hoko”.

Gion is one of the most famous festivals in Japan, and there’s a lot of information about it, in English. Here’re a few links in case you want to read more thoroughly about what I’m talking about below:

• Wikipedia article on Gion (the district).
• Wikipedia article on Gion Matsuri (the festival).
• Information about the yamas and hokos — worth reading if you want to know the background behind these things.
• A sorta map over where they were located (prior to the “big move” on July 17th) — a few years old, but you get the picture.

Now for some pictures, more or less in chronologic order.

(more…)

A cockroach just sauntered by me and smugly slithered into my PJ’s. Luckily I wasn’t wearing them at the time.

I slapped the PJ’s with my school book a couple of times, with enough force to kill a largish rat.

Then I shook the PJ’s, but no cochroach fell out. Le sigh, I said, and looked around, under the couch, etc. but no cochroach. Shook the PJ’s more and this time it fell out. Yay. Alive. What the?

Cochroaches must honestly be the creepiest thing out there. The combination of big, intelligent, fast, and hard-to-kill just weirds me out.

I wish I had a cat. I could just sic the cat on the things whenever they appeared and the prob’d be solved. Crunch crunch.

You in cochroach-infested areas of the world, what should one think about to keep them out?

“How can we who feed on the dead
We, murderers
Find it in us to despair and mourn our relatives.”

On June 1st, me, my girlfriend and her parents went to Tenryuuji, which is considered a world heritage ([wikipedia article]). It’s basically a pond, surrounded by a series of little gardens of various kind. There’s also a building you can go into which has a pretty nifty dragon painted in the ceiling, but you’re not allowed to take pictures in there, so I can’t show you. I can show you pretty gardens, though.

The main area is the place with the gardens. The gardens actually surround this big mansion-like place, where monks do rites and stuff on occasion. Regular folks can’t actually go into the mansion on these days. Luckily this day wasn’t one of those days so we could go inside as well. Anyway, let’s start with the actual getting there.

(more…)

The 6th of May (I know, I’m sort of behind), I went to “Fushimi inari-taisha (伏見稲荷大社)” [wikipedia], together with my girlfriend and her parents. It was more or less a gorgeous day and it was a very beautiful sight. It was a huge temple area, with a trail leading up around with various things to see on the way. We didn’t go all the way (papa-san was getting hungry *grin*) but what I did get to see made me wanna go again. Pictures:

Arrival, a little before noon.

The first thing you did when you arrived was a small cleansing ritual (simply washing your hands and mouth with water from some… thing.

The cleansing thing. You can see a number of little “scoops” with which you gather water, pour it over your one hand, then over the other, and then finally take a sip from it, and spit it out into the area below (surrounded by the gray stone).

There was a pretty cute little map over the whole area. It’s a link so you can click it to see a more sized-up version if you are curious.

Map over the Fushimi inari-taisha (伏見稲荷大社).

I’d make a modified version with a red line following the path I took but you know, I honestly don’t really know where we ended up going. It is quite a lot bigger than it looks on that map, though. I think we walked around for an hour or so, but on that map, we may have moved a few inches or three.

One of the things I particularly love about Japan is the ancient “monster-culture”, or however you wanna call it. There are monsters in every society’s history (ogres or whatever), but the Japanese one stands out somehow. I’m afraid it may have to do with Nintendo.

“Hi.” (This fellow was guarding the entrance to the place, if I recall. Pretty imposing when you’re standing there being stared down at, to be honest.)

I have a hard time finding beauty in structures, but I must admit things like the above strike me as beautiful. I can look at something and often think “Oh. How quaint.” but that’s as far as it gets.

Or how about this one. Gorgeous, if you ask me. Or maybe I’m just Japanophilic.

You found things like this all over the place, as if someone had indifferently strewn them out over the floor without a thought. Incredibly beautiful, and sometimes only noticeable within a single step, in between a narrow path leading away from the main one you’re trekking on. I can’t imagine how many things I missed as I walked there. It’s as if they’re made to be walked again, and again, and each time you’re meant to discover new things.

There’s me, and uh, my girlfriend, who’s hiding. Behind me. As you can see, I’m wearing a Skotos t-shirt (”Why Yes. I am God.”)  — still faithful, after all these years. We are standing against one of the many, many red pillars making the gates (torii, I believe they’re called). These things did never, ever end. I can’t imagine just how many of them there were. This place is one of the more famous ones, so you may have seen it on TV or so, if you haven’t been here personally.

You found these occasionally, i.e. the torii-path splitting up into two directions. Oh and there’s me, too. Look how white my skin is. I’ll be scorched this summer, I just know it.

Another map. There were a variety of maps over the place around the place so you could sort of see where you were. I like these for some reason. A billion times cooler than some computer-made “You Are Here” map.

Another “hidden” spot that you would easily miss if you weren’t looking to the sides all the time. Their unobtrusiveness makes spotting them feel almost sinful, and taking pictures felt like stealing something precious from somebody. But I took a picture anyway. I hope the gods won’t mind (actually, if I understood papa-san correctly, this whole area is dedicated to the god of trade — so by showing you this, you might feel enticed to visit, which the god of trade can’t argue with, now can s/he?).

Ooh, a flower. *snap*

Speaking of flowers, I’m going to try to get the pictures up from Ten-something-something that I went to before. I forgot the name (heh), but it was more or less a collection of gardens. Incredibly gorgeous, and if you happen to like flowers and plants, you’d be in the die-now-happily state. I personally don’t really like flowers that much, but being there and seeing all the gardens and arrangements made me appreciate our flowery friends on a whole new level.

Something that you tend to find everywhere in Kyoto, especially in places like these, are the tiny little streets that stretch out in every direction. Their love for octopus might have inspired them, who knows. Or maybe it’s that they’ve been far more preservative over their heritage from the old times than we have, in Sweden. Regardless, I hate to sound conservative but I completely adore these.

A gang of… monster-dogs. Or are they bulldogs, the guys in the middle row? No, they look more like goblins.

The last image. Buddha stuffs. There were lots of it all over the place, but this one was particularly large and … goldey.

That’s it for now. I’ll try to get the Ten-something-something pictures up as soon as possible. Oh, and I’ll figure out the name of Ten-something-something as well. I think I’ve got a brochure lying around here somewhere with it written on.