A and H were both wearing yukatas while me and my girlfriend (Ayapuu) wore regular clothes. I would’ve liked to have worn my yukata again too, but neither me nor my girlfriend thought about it.

When we got there, there was this little wagon-trail of food stands, lit up and noisy, down below where we were sitting, so me and Ayapuu went down and bought Takoyaki, fried chicken (in a mug…?), and yakisoba. Tasted awesome but we could only carry that much so we didn’t really get full.

The fireworks were pretty. Sort of like art. Not at all like the fireworks in Sweden, in new years, with the whole sky exploding in colors. The Swedish new years fireworks have their charm too, but this was more “thought out” and less erratic/spastic. I think I spotted that mushroom in Super Mario Bros (the original NES game) that is the very first enemy you see, but I’m not sure.

It continued for a little over an hour. A 30-ish year old little woman was sitting behind us commenting.

On every.

Single.

Mother fucking.

Firework. Like, every time something appeared on the sky there was a comment right from behind. I shrugged it off, thinking she was with a kid, but afterwards when I turned around, she was alone with her (I presume) boyfriend. No kid.

Anyway, there was a silly amount of people there, though I’m sort of getting used to the concept by now. The way home I thought we were gonna be standing in line to get on the train for an hour+, but we got on the first one that arrived, some 10 minutes after we got there. With the amount of people there, it must have taken like 3-4 trains before everyone managed to get back home.

When we got back to my girlfriends’ city, we went to a convenience store and bought food (told you the Takoyaki/fried chicken (in a mug…?)/yakisoba combo wasn’t enough) which we ate back at her family’s place.

I’ll definitely go again next year, praying that the retarded little woman won’t be anywhere in my vicinity that time. I was told that there were fireworks today as well, but I’m not THAT intrigued by them, so I’m just gonna wait until next year.

Or try to get my ass to Sweden this new years.

1. I hadn’t experienced one ever.

2. I wanted the experience once, so I didn’t panic if a “bad one” happened.

The bad news? I slept right through it. That just sums my life story up, right there. Blah! Better luck next time, me.

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).

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”

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.

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!

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.

July 15th. You can see one of the hokos up ahead, with all the white lamps in front of it.

I went to the festival twice — once on July 15th in the evening, wearing a yukata (as you can see on the first picture of this blog post), and once on July 17th in the morning, to see the actual parading-the-yamahokos thing. The above picture is from July 15th. It rained sporadically throughout the evening, which was sort of lucky for us, because although it’s icky to be out in rain, it also makes other people not be there, which makes walking and stuff a little easier. (Oh, and I might observe that wearing a yukata in rain is quite pleasant, if it’s not cold outside. Contrary to e.g. jeans and other “heavy” materials, a yukata doesn’t really get heavier in rain, and doesn’t soak up the water as bad either. I was pleasantly surprised.)

The same hoko, closer up. See the spear way up there? These things apparently weigh around 12,000 kgs (26,000-27,000 lbs), and rise 25 meters (80-85 feet) up in the air!

Kanko hoko (函谷鉾). The white little lamps just scream “asia”, don’t they? That’s sort of all I could think about when I took this picture. (In fact, my girlfriend told me the name of the thing after I posted this blog entry. Teehee.)

Kikusui hoko (菊水鉾). By the time I took this picture, it was getting dark, so it’s sort of silhouettey. (I mistakenly said this was Tsuki hoko earlier, but was corrected. Apologies!)

Closer-up picture of those pretty white lamps. You know, I’d love to just have a house one day, with lamps like these.

I took the above picture while waiting to get on the Fune Hoko (one of the first few pictures, the boat-like hoko). It was a little expensive (700 yen) but it was something I’m happy I did once.

Fune Hoko again. Still waiting to get on (but we were inside, and it was a very cozy atmosphere, so I didn’t mind the waiting one bit). The attention to detail on these things can’t really be appreciated without being there and seeing them — especially not when the pictures are taken using a cell phone camera. But you sort of get the idea, right? Oh and by the way, the plastic cover is there to protect from the rain, I’m guessing. I never really asked but I can’t think of what else.

This was taken from the inside of Fune Hoko, and is the ceiling. The little square paintings depict various little motives. The ticket for getting on actually hold one of the motives — a different one each year — so the more, uh, involved fans might try to collect the whole set. If they come back every year for 20 years straight, that is.

The wicked li’l bird, shot from the inside of Fune Hoko. I wish I had a close-up of it facing the camera, but alas, I couldn’t quite get that high up in the air without doing something folly, such as trying to climb the outside of the hoko, or something equally retarded.

This blog post has already turned way too big, and I haven’t even gotten to the actual parade yet, so I’m simply going to divide this thing into two separate posts, “to symbolize the fact I went out on two separate days”, if a more elaborate excuse is of necessity.

The next post will be focused on the parade day. I’m aiming to have it up by tomorrow!

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.”

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.

Basically, walking to the actual garden area, you cross over this river-thingie (I don’t know its name — I suck as a virtual tour guide, don’t I) … it’s pretty, anyway.

The same river, from the side.

Something that seems to be a reoccuring phenomenon is that surrounding famous (sacred-ish) places are always other sacred-ish things. It’s as if the temples or sacred sites sort of grow over time. Of course, that’s most likely what’s happened too — these places are old! Over time, if something doesn’t disappear, it tends to take more and more focus, I’ve noticed.

Gate leading into the main area of Tenryuuji.

If I told you that this was a screenshot from Lord of the Rings, would you think I was lying?

Well, I would be, but it sure looks like something out of fantasy. Except for the little sign-post to the right of the statue, of course.

I’m not sure what I did different, but here’s another picture of the same statue. Doesn’t look as LotRish anymore but at least you can make out the details.

This is what you are met with as you enter the actual area. I don’t know what makes a bunch of gravel look so pretty but it sort of made you feel all cozy just looking at it.

Sort of has an unreal look to it, doesn’t it?

The mansion-like building, which is surrounded by the gardens.

A warning to sensitive viewers — if an abundance of greenery and flowery stuffs bother you, you may want to stop here.

There are no comments on the following series of pictures. I’m hoping you’ll see the contrast in between one spot and the next. The pictures are sorted chronologically, and while I have left out a lot of them (unfortunately), they sort of depict the path we took as we walked along the narrow path.

It’s hard to imagine that this is all the same place, the pictures taken within paces from each other.

Look, it’s an arm. My girlfriend’s, to be precise. She felt so pleased when she pulled that one off. *snicker*

I have a confession to make…

I absolutely adore bamboo…

I know it may sound a little odd, but I do. I don’t know why. It’s the same with deserts, actually. I adore deserts. Only difference is that I haven’t ever been to a desert. I have been to a bamboo forest, though. Now.

Speaking of bamboo and deserts, I kept being drawn towards things like the above, which makes me think of an oasis. A ring of pulsating life, or that kind of feeling over it.

The pond itself was more or less the highlight of the area in terms of beauty. So if you stuck with me through the green stuffs, here’s the reward:

There you have it.

I have some pictures of the mansion-place as well, but I’m going to stop here since this post is going to take weeks for people on dial-up to download as it is. I might post a few pictures out of the remaining ones in subsequent posts just to show you cool stuff, but for now, this is it.