Our field-trip last weekend took us to two temples, Byodo-in and To-ji. Keen observers will notice we're traveling forward in time with these visits, and the "newer" the temples, the more impressive they become. Byodo-in and To-ji specifically make an interesting pair, because while both are breath-taking, they are so in almost exactly opposite ways.

Byodo-in actually started its life as a summer house for the royal Fujiwara family, and was converted into a temple some time later. Perhaps as a result of this, the actual temple building, while beautiful, is somewhat small and un-impressive compared to many temples: the vast Buddha almost seems cramped in its center room. The real strength of Byodo-in lies in its lush, vast, incredible surroundings, which still remain somewhat similar to their original period look, a rarity in Japan. On reason for this preservation, in addition to the temple itself, may be the association with the famous Tale of Genji which, if I'm remembering right, is set in roughly the same time and place. In any case, the beauty of the wide river, hills and long bridges leading to Byodo-in cannot be overstated.







And of course, for all my criticism, the temple itself, the Phoenix Hall, is pretty amazing too.





To-ji, meanwhile, retains none of its surroundings whatsoever: everything outside the temple walls has gone very, very modern:



But inside there is no mistaking the seriousness of the creators or maintainers of the complex. The grounds are wide and mostly empty. The buildings are massive and ominous, towering over the visitor like brooding storm clouds. In some of the buildings sit Buddha images that put the Byodoin image to shame with their size, and a whole host of others only slightly smaller, yet the buildings never feel too small.



The massive main gate.



Closeup on the doors, and a detail from inside.



One of the smaller shrines inside the temple.



The star of the show: To-ji's massive pagoda, visible even from the train station several miles away.



Entrance on one of the other buildings. Kondo maybe?





One last thing before I finish: please, check out the Flickr. This was one of the best rounds of pictures I've taken here, and there's simply no way to cram them all into a blog post. These are just the highlights. So if you only check out the flickr account once, do it for this set.

Happy Halloween!

I'm still trying to catch up on my posts, but I figured I should do this one while it was still, yunno, Halloween. The celebration at campus actually happened yesterday. Even early on a lot of people were going to class in full get-up, and by the time I got back a little after noon, there were costumes everywhere.



Halloween isn't native to Japan of course, so I've always been a little vague on just how well-known it is here. KG celebrates it, but I suspected that was just because of the international nature of the University. My language professor clarified things yesterday though: It seems the knowledge of and interest in Halloween has exploded in Japan in recent years. Ten years ago, she says, no one in Japan knew what Halloween was. Now there's merchandise and mention of it everywhere. It's still nowhere near as well-known as in the states of course, but it has a foothold here now, and as big H is my favorite holiday, this makes me very, very happy.

The costumes around campus, as you can already see, were fantastic. More after the jump.



On the left is Eddy, one of the people I've been hanging out a lot with around here, in his fantastic Waluigi costume. To the right, a guy dressed as a classic ronin samurai.



Another great group caught early in the day




I saw this one as I was going to class. Somehow this is so much better than if I'd just seen him hanging out in the hall. And of course, he was sitting far back in the corner.



These two deserve special mention because: a. They had some of the best costumes of the day, b. They were Alice in Wonderland themed and c. They invited me to hang out with them as a group, since I was too.



I also saw this guy early on. Creepy (and awesome) as hell. I was on the other side of a thick glass wall when I took this shot, but that only made me feel slightly safer.



On the left, a guy dressed as the puppet from Saw. His mouth slid up and down on a stick too. On the right, A guy wearing the hat (and antlers) of a character named Chopper from One Piece. A similar hat is sitting next to my laptop as I type this, and I think it's his: he gave it to someone for a moment, and she, unable to find him, passed it on to me, in the hopes that I might return it to him. And I might. It's a pretty cool hat.



Another one of my friends, Kristin (is that the spelling?). She's a panda. In this picture, not, yunno, in real life. Although having a panda as a friend would be pretty sweet.



A bunch of workers at the CIE on campus dressed up as the full Power Rangers team, and villain (or rather, the Japanese show that proceeded Power Rangers). I only caught these three though.



Of course there was a Jack Sparrow. And of course he was awesome. I wonder how long this is going to last though? Will there be Jack Sparrows at every Halloween for the next decade now? Not that I'm complaining :D.



There was also another Alice team. And they had a rabbit. Which was cool.



Some more people from my seminar house formed an (almost) complete Team Rocket.



Zombies are another common theme, but this guy deserves props for pulling off so well, and for doing this a few seconds after he saw me setting up for the shot.

In the evening there was a costume contest which was a lot of fun. Don't have many photos, but I did get a few videos:














All in all, a pretty good Halloween.

There's surprisingly little in the way of candy bars in Japan, and what does exist is pretty small. So I asked my Mom to send along a few with her next package (this was several weeks back, but as is obvious by now, I'm still playing catch-up). This was what I got. It's actually all gone now, but I thought I'd post this in memoriam. Mmm, chocolate.

I love romance films.

No, I actually still hate them. But I love Koi no Mon. In my defense, Koi isn't really a "romance film" as such: more like a romantic comedy. Even those kind of films can get obnoxious quickly, but to its credit Koi is so wonky, frantic and schizophrenic that it never does.

Our protagonist, Mon, is a twentysomething eccentric, every inch the devoted, distracted artist. He claims as his official profession the drawing of Manga...with rocks. But as this has predictably been slow to catch on we find him as a semi-vagrant, wandering in beaten clothes from one awful part-time job to the next. In one of these he meets Koino, another attractive twenty-something who seems to be the only member of the company not intent on sneering at him at every opportunity. An altercation at Mon's welcoming party ends his career at the company before it starts, but Koino kindly invites him to her place for the night. Lubricated by alcohol, the evening quickly descends into a vivid sexual blur, then blackness. But the next morning in a clever, gradual reveal, Mon awakens to discover he's dressed as a Soul Caliber character and Koino, dressed as another, is prancing around him, dragging him out of bed and in front of a backdrop to pose for pictures while he struggles to figure out what on earth is going on.


What follows is a powerful story about geek culture in Japan. Everything is here, from the fan-art scene (Koino is a Doujinshi artist) to cosplay, Manga cafes and Comiket. And all of it heartfelt and honest, neither unfairly vilified nor whitewashed. Here is Japanese geekdom, with all its warts and all its joy and love.

All of this happens around Koino and Aoi's relationship, which forms the narrative core of the film, but this has the same strength as its surroundings: honesty. Both Koino and Mon are profoundly flawed, broken people. Both have significantly different interests and ways of seeing the world. And yet, through all of it, through all the drama and ugly personal demons and weird quirks, they're still able to connect as lovers. This (in addition to the excellent humour) is the reason Koi no Mon resonates so strongly for me: its honesty. The flaws the characters have are not romantic or poetic: they're genuinely unsettling. Koino, it's eventually revealed, is massively in debt thanks to some bad decisions. Mon cheats (or is coerced into cheating) on Koino. Koino (almost) cheats on Mon. Both of them are so obsessed/in love with their interests (Koino's fan culture, Mon's art) that they suffer from tunnel vision. Koino is working in what is, at best, a seedy cosplay cafe, and more likely a brothel. Mon eventually visits it. But through all this, through this sea of broken humanity, two people are still able to connect, deeply. To see this in a movie is fantastic, because it's so much closer to reality. I love it. And if more romance films were like Koi, digustingly honesty yet still uplifting, I might not hate the genre so much.

Image used under fair use.

I hate romance films.

They're sappy, unrewarding and present a dangerously twisted view of the way relationships work. On these counts, "Twixt Calm and Passion," the 2001 Toho film (that's studio, not director) offends less than most Hollywood fare, but it still offends.


The movie is based on two novels written by two novelists in collaboration, each telling one half of a relationship between Junsei and Aoi, our protagonists. Once they were the perfect college couple, gazing into each others eyes over over coffee, or grabbing their first kiss in the school courtyard while a practicing cello player near-by accidentally serenades them. Now they've been tragically ripped asunder by misunderstanding, but still have feelings for each other they can't hide under the veneer of their miserable new relationships.

Will they keep their vow to meet ten years hence in Milan? Will the plot do anything at all unexpected? Will the movie run out of cliches to exploit, both within its genre and without (Junsei starts out riding a bike, then an electrically assisted bike and then, you guessed it, a moped. Because, you know, he's maturing.)

Incidentally Nicholas Driscoll, whose review I'm checking as I try to remember some of these details (since neither a Wikipedia article nor an IMDB entry exist: we're really off the reservation now), calls the film's love a "sexualized kind", discomfort obvious in his tone. This seems a bit sensitive: Calm and Passion, if memory serves, has exactly one sex scene, and even here the nudity (and sex itself) is so implied it's nearly metaphorical. The idea that it's somehow objectionable or unusual for a story about romance to have sex in it is more than a little odd.

Credit where credit is due though: Mr. Driscoll also recognizes the intense, Romeo and Juliet-esque pursuit of one love at all costs as a tad off.

The film has its strengths: good acting, good (if idealized) cinematography and a patience with scenes and characters that would be harder to find in an American romance film. At the end of the day though, it's still the most depressing film we've seen, and not all intentionally.

Image (and some information) from Toho Kingdom, Toho company. Used under fair use.

Midway through the day last weekend I noticed there was a small event going on in the park next to my seminar house, so I stopped by to check it out and grab some photos. "Matsuri," from what I understand, are harvest-festival-ish events that pop up all over in the fall. Many are more formal and traditional, with parades to the local temple and bright costumes, but some are like this, a local gathering not unlike what you might see in the states. Tents selling food or marketing more expensive items, music, raffles, and of course the inevitable giant inflatable animal. To say nothing of bands playing surprisingly familiar songs. Photos after the jump.

I visited Hiroshima with one of my friend's classes over the weekend. It's quite an experience.

All the obvious parts of the experience were there: the sickening feeling, the regret, the psychological disorientation such a place produces. One of the things that struck me was how long it's been. Most of the monuments have been rebuilt at least once by now. The A-bomb dome is heavily re-enforced and restored. It's been a long time. Have we learned anything since?


The museum itself is beautifully and powerfully arranged, a long flowing path that starts with the history of Hiroshima's pre-war history, then examines the effects of the bomb from every possible angle. Dioramas show a detailed and devastating before and after of the city. Several walls are plastered with telegrams the Mayors of Hiroshima send to every country when they conduct a new Atomic Weapons test.











Considering the sheer amount of information conveyed, it's impressive how clear and accessible the museum makes it. Though I didn't get a picture of it, I was also impressed by the exhibit's admission, near the beginning, of the horrors of Nanking and the like. No excuses, no glossing over, just plain and factual. It adds weight to the museum's message: that this exhibit of horror and devastation is not at its core a missive against the US, but rather a missive against war, the hideous force
that drives all nations to commit such nightmares. This is not to say that we are exempt from blame, just that the problem is bigger than us, bigger than any one nation, or even any one weapon. It sounds idealistic and impractical, but as a species our technology and knowledge have simply progressed too far for us to keep this up. Either we give up our childish notions of conflict, or we will destroy ourselves. It's nothing short of a miracle we haven't already.











This is stone under the memorial Cenotaph at the center of the park. It reads
"安らかに眠って下さい　過ちは　繰返しませぬから."

"Rest in peace, for we shall not repeat this mistake."


Aside from all the heavy history, Hiroshima is also a booming, active town. Restaurant boats float on the river, Shinto shrines sit packed onto busy street-corners. On the way back, completely by accident, I was treated to my first glance of the famous Japanese convention of covered shopping arcades. And at night no less, when the light glowed from windows and signs like a wonderland of commerce. There wasn't time (or money) for any real shopping, but I was able to manage a few quick shots as we passed.










And the train station was no exception: to end on a light note, here's a sample of what one of many cake shops was selling. Mmmmm.