Japan: Ganbate!: Week three: things are...different.

Konnichiwa everyone,

Well, I'm rapidly approaching my first full month of being in Japan. Time has flown by, and I get the creeping sensation that I'm going to have to toss some things from my Japan bucket list. So much to do, and yet so little time...

Last weekend was our first three day weekend! Woo! On Friday we went out to karaoke, Saturday we went to Nara, Sunday we went to a festival in Kishiwada called Danjiri Matsuri, and on Monday we had ourselves a calm typhoon day.

Karaoke!

Karaoke was a pretty darn good deal at a local bar--2,000 yen (roughly $20) for 3 hours of karaoke and nomihoudai, or all you can drink. Japanese drinks do seem a lot less potent than drinks in the US, and not just the liquor, some places even the sodas taste watered down (a little ridiculous considering there aren't any refills). I just kept pointing at the vodka section of the menu and the Kahlua Milk and saw what showed up. Most things were decent, considering I was spending $20 for probably around 10 drinks. The nomihoudai's don't have straight shots though, just mixed drinks...understandable, because I'm sure some of these men could clear through a bottle pretty quickly. Overall great time with some really good friends.

Outside of Todaiji Temple

This weekend I also saw several transvestites, or fukusō tōsaku-sha, walking around. I saw one at karaoke, and another at the train station. Fukuso are apparently fairly common in Japan, and has almost become commonplace in bigger, more "eccentric" cities like Tokyo and Osaka. So far, they haven't been as flamboyant as your average US transvestite or cross-dresser, but it is something that catches you off guard in the sea of white-shirt-black-pants.

Saturday we went to Nara and visited Todaiji Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is by far the most beautiful temple I have been to yet, just something beyond words. We stepped inside the Great Buddha Hall, faced with this massive Buddha, known as Daibutsu (great Buddha). It is the largest bronze statue of Buddha in the world, and pictures from my camera simply don't do it justice. And we, as a group from mixed backgrounds, both ethnic and religious, were completely taken aback and lost for words. Regardless of religious affiliation, and apart from several of the temples and shrines I've visited while I've been here, this has truly been the most spiritual place I've been, maybe in my entire life. When you stop and look up at Buddha, this overwhelming combination of peace and insignificance comes over you...but somehow gives you a sense of your significance to the cycle of the world. Truly, it was incredible.

Before the entrance to the Great Buddha Hall

Daibutsu. Absolutely beautiful.

Deer at Nara!

After making our rounds around the temple, we headed out to the grounds, which are covered in deer. Sika deer are regarded as messengers of the Gods in Shintoism, and therefore roam freely around Nara. They are SO CUTE. Lord, I miss petting animals, so anything at this point is a healthy outlet. Anyway! They're everywhere, and you can pay to feed them. When I fed them, there was a little jerk one which was biting the others (and me) to try to get the bread, so I withstood the biting (my arms, my stomach, my shorts, my shirt...) so I could feed the nicer one. Heh heh heh. Karma works daily, little deer...

After Todaiji Temple, we walked around Nara and visited several of their other famous shrines and temples. All of it was beautiful, and my next favorite was the Nigatsu-do Temple, because of how pretty the view was from the top. So refreshing after a hot day walking around.

Nigatsu-do Temple

Nigatsu-do Temple, one of the great temples of Nara

Danjiri Matsuri, Kishiwada

Disgusting Japanese toilet. Found this online but this is it. /evil

Sunday we went to a festival at Kishiwada (about an hour and a half outside of Hirakata) called Danjiri Matsuri, where they create floats and run a track through the town as fast as they can. Unfortunately, it was raining, so they weren't able to go as fast as they normally do, but it was still pretty awesome. I have a video on Facebook which I'll try to link to if I remember. My day had a damper on it not because of the rain, but because of the UNBELIEVABLE STRUGGLE TO FIND A NORMAL TOILET, sweet LORD. No porto-potties, McDonalds had theirs blocked off/shut down, all the conbini's had theirs for Employees Only, and the one train station had crowded, smelly, disgusting squatter toilets. In this country, which produces the incredible Toto toilets--bidets for the front and the back, heated seats, water sounds--you get the option of either a Toto toilet...or a hole in the ground. It simply blows my mind to have these kinds of extremes, and I've noticed a lot of Japanese people that will wait in line for the "Western Toilet", even if the squatter "toilet" is available. Why in the world they stick to these kinds of toilets I have no IDEA, and it isn't because they're old facilities--even in the new ones they build, like at my university, they put an equal amount of normal toilets and holes. I just don't understand. I was finally able, after 4 hours of having to pee (standing in the rain), to find a bathroom (at this point I was willing to squat if I could just find it, but luckily it was one that I could sit on even, huzzah!) at a hotel that allowed me to use theirs on the first floor. Thank God.

Monday (well, actually we got sweeps of it Sunday too, hence the rain all the day before) was Typhoon Man-yi struck the mainland on Sunday (closer to Tokyo and the east coast of Japan), with gusts of more than 100 miles per hour, and apparently doubled the region’s annual rainfall. This is the second typhoon since I've been here, and as a Floridian I never take these things too seriously unless it's at least a category 2 or 3. However, as we learned in 2005, often it isn't the wind that puts down the hurt, it's the rain. Japan seems to do a good job breaking up the storms with their mountains, but it does leave them with a lot of rain, which it seems they don't handle so well. There's a river near where I live, and normally it's calm, flowing but fairly low and not very fast. On Monday morning when I headed out to the post office, it was rushing, a full-on white-water-rapids kind of flow, and a lot more filled. There was flooding in Kyoto, but nothing incredibly serious, and there were three deaths caused from the storm. We had plans to go out, but since the trains closed until mid-afternoon due to flooding on some tracks and cities, we called it a typhoon day and just relaxed. There was also a minor earthquake while I was sleeping my first week, at 3am, which I completely slept through. No shaking other than that so far.

My random observations of the week:

Japan works on a lot of "honor systems", something so different from the US that I think it deserves a little talking point. At the train stations, you buy your ticket, put it through the machine, and continue through. Now, at most train stations there aren't gates blocking the entrance/exit (they're the same machines)--possibly done just to save time when there's big crowds--and they just have a guard at the end in a booth watching when people go through. So you're supposed to hold on to your ticket when the machine spits it back out and insert it in the machine again when you get off the train, and this is a good system for a few reasons. First because there's times where you get off before where you bought your ticket for (something we've done twice now), and with that you can go up to a machine or to the ticket watchers and get refunded the money you didn't spend. Second, you don't have to spend your time spinning through those super-germy nasty metal rotating gates like at most US public transportation places. This can also be bad though, because if you lose your ticket then you have to either go through and hope they don't notice, or walk up to them and apologize for losing your ticket (and hope they trust that you actually bought one in the first place). As a foreigner, you kind of have to assume they won't believe you, will wave you through, but will talk smack about you later. So that's something to keep in mind when you use the transportation here.

Also on the subject of transportation, they have parking attendants at almost every parking lot. I thought maybe it was just because it was a big business by my school that had it, but even the 100 Yen store (Dollar Store) had a parking attendant, so I asked my Japanese friends about it. Apparently most businesses hire one to avoid any problems with parking, and I guess this could contribute to the lack of dented and scratched cars they have here (because it definitely isn't due to their "safe driving", pft).

I think that about wraps up that time. I'll take pictures of my dorm and school eventually, and do a post on that perhaps, but time will tell. Other than that, classes are good, nothing too crazy. We have another holiday this Monday but I'm not sure what exactly we're doing this weekend since Tokyo was all booked up. I just finished booking my trip to Hiroshima/Miyajima the weekend of October 11th (another three day weekend), and now I have to get onto booking for Tokyo.

I'm so incredibly blessed with my life and all the people in it, and for everyone I know who is struggling with something right now, know I'm praying for you, not just on a daily basis but at every shrine and temple I visit. You are always in my heart and in my mind.

Until next time, ja mada!

<3